Morphic
by Dragonfree
Summary: A group of scientists who have had a little to drink get the not–so–brilliant idea of attempting to create 'Pokémorphs' as described in so many book series, but when they succeed and the news gets out, they are forced to raise the morphs themselves.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** This fic is rated T (PG-13) despite fairly heavy swearing in parts on the grounds that swearing alone hardly justifies an M (R). Regardless, I felt it would be appropriate to note this.

It will also contain very numerous references to politically sensitive subjects including abortion, religion and genetic experiments. These references are not here to rant or preach my opinion on any of them and the characters expressing their views on the subjects are not meant in any way to stand for my opinion of the general population of people who hold their views. All opinions of my characters are strictly their own and are to be treated as such. Do not review this story to say you "agree" or "disagree" with me or try to debate about those subjects, because you were never meant to take them that way. Regardless, if they offend you, you have been warned.

* * *

_Calm down now. Be cool._

A dark-haired man in his thirties straightened his tie nervously in front of a large mirror. He ran his eyes yet again quickly up and down his reflection. His posture looked far too timid for such an important debate. He took a deep breath and tried to straighten himself, pushed the glasses a little further up on his nose and silently cursed himself for having shown up with them – they were too big and looked too dorky. Too stereotypical. He wished he'd gotten used to contacts sometime.

"Mr. Edwards, five minutes."

He nodded, seeing in the mirror as a short member of the TV crew stepped out of the room. He was alone now.

"Damn it," he swore under his breath, briefly taking his glasses off just to see how he looked. He depressingly assured himself that the blurry flesh-colored blob he could see in front of him definitely looked much better now than with the glasses on. Damn it all. Tomorrow he'd get himself some contacts and use them, no matter what. Who knew when he'd next have to appear on TV?

_Why couldn't they just have sent Dave?_ he thought to himself. _I'm terrible with words. He could convince that audience that black is white if he wanted._

It was a rhetorical question, of course. Dave and his girlfriend were now at some fancy restaurant celebrating their anniversary. He had been practically begged to go; Dave had given him a long speech about what his relationship meant to him. And in some moment of pity, he had agreed to it, figuring it would perhaps, maybe, if he looked optimistically at it, not be _quite_ as bad as it sounded. Damn it all. It was even worse.

"Mr. Edwards?"

"Yes. I'm coming."

He took one last look at himself in the mirror – there were so many things that were still wrong! – but dragged himself through the door. A member of the TV crew ushered him into a chair. He felt his palms sweating at the sight of all the cameras; he quickly turned to his opponent in the chair opposite him. It was a well-built woman with long, black hair who would have been attractive if only her thick-rimmed purple glasses had been a little less extravagant and her expression not so awfully stern. She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes with the utmost contempt of one with the firm conviction that he could certainly be no less than a personal messenger of the devil. He shifted in his chair. She was no more comfortable to look at than the cameras. He desperately looked around for anything else to focus his attention on. With relief, he saw the host, a casual, stylishly-dressed man, come hurrying over to sit in a third chair and put up a shamelessly fake television smile.

"Good evening, and welcome to Friday Night with James Sullivan!" the host said suddenly, indicating that they were on air. "As most of you will already know, there has been much recent controversy around a team of scientists working for Heywood Labs! After the news had leaked out, their spokesman and leader, David Ambrose, publically admitted that the group actually managed to create 'Pokémorphs', fetuses with spliced human and Pokémon DNA, which now appear to be growing normally. In particular, the controversy is about this statement…"

A television screen behind them showed a handsome Dave, standing on the steps in front of the lab with a crowd of photographers below him: "Look," he said irritably, "we have absolutely no plans to actually raise those things. We just wanted to see if it was possible, and okay, it is. We're just going to watch them grow for a week or two to see how they're developing and then destroy them. There will be no 'freak children' or 'Pokémorph minority'. It's no big deal. End of discussion."

The screen turned off and James the host immediately began reading from the cue screens again: "As it turned out, it was quite the opposite: this comment, at least to a large and loud portion of the world's population, was a very big deal and began a heated discussion that we will see the pleasure of continuing tonight, live on this very show! Please welcome Hannah Mariani, spokesperson for the Stop Abortion Movement –" the woman nodded curtly towards the camera "– and Brian Edwards, one of the scientists involved."

Brian quickly realized he wasn't supposed to be staring wildly at the show host and jerked his head towards the camera, giving it a nervous smile.

"So, Brian, why don't you start?"

"Me?" slipped out of him before he could stop himself. "Oh, well… you see…"

He tried desperately to remember what he had been planning to say, flicking his gaze at his calm-faced opponent. Oh, yes, now he remembered. He cleared his throat loudly.

"Look," he said, failing miserably at removing the nervousness from his voice, "if these children – if they ever _became_ children – what – I mean, would you really send a child like that to a public school? They'd get bullied for sure. These children would lead perfectly miserable lives – if they ever were to become children, that is, because they certainly aren't now…"

"I assume, then," Hannah said coolly, "that you are of the opinion that fat children with glasses ought to be systematically murdered because they'll probably be bullied at school?"

She looked at him with stinging blue eyes and Brian realized with dread that she had done her research: although it was impossible to tell now, he had been overweight as a kid and of course he had worn glasses.

Damn it. Why did she look so creepily calm?

"It's… it's not the same," he said quickly. "They can't feel anything. They don't 'want' to live. It's…"

"They will," Hannah just said.

"Well, since you seem so eager to speak," James said brightly, "why don't you tell us your position, Hannah?"

"As I see it," she said simply, "the case is dead already. It is even more dead than the general debate for or against abortion. What do those in favor always say? 'What about rape?' 'What about what the sexually liberal call "accidents"?' 'What about if the child turns out to be seriously disabled and the parents wouldn't be able to handle it?' We don't even need to complicate the matter with those here. This is not rape. It's not an accident. Nothing is 'turning out' to be anything it wasn't obviously to begin with. These men –" she pointed an accusing finger at Brian "– perfectly deliberately created _children_ with perfectly deliberate qualities that could cause them problems in the future. You, Mr. Edwards, need to realize that if they get bullied, it is _your_ fault. You have no excuse whatsoever."

Brian stared at her, dumbfounded. "Why are you always calling them children?" he muttered, only half-convinced, while trying to think of something else to say.

"Because that is what they are," she said shortly.

Brian took a deep breath, thinking of what the others had been talking to him about. "Okay, look. If we didn't destroy the fetuses, who would raise them?"

She gave him an odd look, raising an eyebrow. "You, of course," she said. "They're your children which you created by your own free will. I haven't known anybody who deliberately decided to have a child and then expected someone else to raise it."

He stared at her, the implications of this zooming through his head. "What? Us? But… what are you talking about, anyway?" he asked heatedly. "We didn't deliberately create _children_. We deliberately created fetuses we intended to destroy. We weren't planning to raise…"

"Well, you should have thought about that before creating them, shouldn't you?" Hannah remarked coldly.

There was some great way to respond to this, he was sure, and Dave would have said it in the blink of an eye, but his mind was being too numb and panicky at the moment to think of anything.

"It… it seemed like a much better idea at the time," he said stupidly. "We'd had a little to drink that night since it was Dave's birthday – he always gets weird ideas when he's drunk – and it was just so obvious, I mean, look at all those book series – and after getting the idea and figuring out how it was possible in the party, we just figured the next day, hey, why not…" What the hell was he saying?

Hannah gave him a disgusted frown and looked at the camera. "Drunk scientists who want to imitate bestseller book series in some sad attempt to get attention make genetic experiments with unborn human children, and now, to top it all, they're going to be murdering them. Clearly this is only another example of the immorality of some of the men we call intellectuals today. We cannot let them do this."

"But…"

"Well, our time is running out," James interrupted as a member of the TV crew gestured to him. "We will have our next guests after some advertisements."

* * *

Damn it.

Damn it all.

Fucking hell.

Brian shivered as he started his car. In the rear-view mirror, he could see that he was pale and sweaty. And his glasses still looked so damn stupid. He had failed so miserably it wasn't funny. The public against them once and for all in one fell swoop. Why the hell had he been mentioning that they'd been drunk?

Those thoughts kept cycling through his head on the long journey to his house.

His cellphone started vibrating in his pocket just as he was pulling into the driveway. He slapped his hand over his face momentarily in some abstract hope that it would just stop ringing. It didn't.

He fished the phone out of his pocket, opened it and held it shakily to his ear. "Yes?"

_"Well, now you've gone and done it."_

Brian sighed heavily. "I told you, Dave. I suck at this kind of thing. You really should've…"

_"I had no idea you sucked that much! I persuaded Jane to agree to go home a little early from the restaurant so we could watch you on the one-hour belated channel – I felt embarrassed for even knowing you!"_ the voice on the other end of the phone shouted angrily. There was a sigh followed by silence. _"You've really fucked us up, Brian."_

"I know," Brian said miserably. "She was just making so much sense and being so calm that I just…"

_"Making sense?"_ the phone shouted at him. _"She was making exactly no sense at all! You didn't even say half of the stuff we talked about! And for Christ's sake – well, not his, specifically, but you know what I mean – babbling on about how I have weird ideas when I'm drunk? What the fuck?"_

"I don't know," Brian replied desperately. "I just… maybe she was right. I mean, it seems kinda cruel to create them at all if… maybe we should raise them…"

_"Right? Right?"_ Dave repeated. _"Of course there's not much at stake for you here, since you're single, but those of us whose home has a breast to spare – do you really expect Joe to go home to his kids and tell them, 'Hey, guys, you're going to have a brother and he's a freak!'? And me, personally, I like my private time with Jane. Kids would really ruin that, especially freak kids. Maybe they'll even be peeing all over the place to mark their territory or something! There's no way we can abort them after that went on air. There's no way we're getting any financial support now unless we raise those kids. You seriously fucked us up, man. Remind me never to make you represent us again."_

"I know," Brian muttered, but Dave had already hung up on the other end of the line. He sighed and closed the cellphone, pushing it back into his pocket. He stayed in the car for a few more minutes, staring at the garage door between burying his face in his hands. He had really messed things up. The others would never forgive him, ever.

Not much to do about that now.

He exited the car and thought for a moment before turning his cellphone off. Then he went in, made himself some instant noodles and went to bed.

The next day, Heywood Labs issued a public statement to apologize for their previous plans and state that the scientists involved would in fact themselves raise the Pokémorph children to the best of their ability.


	2. Chapter 2

"All right, guys and gals… I hope you all have at least some idea of what's going on here, but for the sake of any spouses who haven't been paying attention, I'll still go into the nitty-gritty details." 

Dave looked over the table. He was sitting by the short side with his (beautiful as always) girlfriend Jane on his right side. The other nine were seated by the long sides, looking at him. He pressed a few keys on the laptop in front of him and turned the ceiling projector on by pressing a button on the remote.

"Well, as you almost definitely know, we decided a couple of months ago to attempt to create 'Pokémorphs', which means, in the unlikely case you haven't read all that pseudoscientific crap like 'The Life of a Morph' or the 'Sarah Hooter' series, a human being spliced with a Pokémon to create… well, something like this."

He pressed a key on his laptop. On the smooth, white wall behind him appeared the cover illustration of 'Sarah Hooter and the Rocket Experiment': a sexy teenage girl with Vulpix ears, a tuft of red hair that organized itself into unnaturally orderly curls on the top of her head, and six curly, reddish-brown tails fanning out behind her as she struck a pose. A couple of people snickered.

"Ridiculous, isn't it? Well, it's possible. We proved that here at Heywood Labs – of course the whole thing with Team Rocket suddenly turning an ordinary girl into half a Vulpix is bullshit and the real method is a lot different, but the end result is the same. We even specifically created a Vulpix morph who is likely to look very similar to Sarah Hooter here when she grows up. Of course," he added with emphasis, "we never intended for her ever to grow up. She'll be made fun of like all hell at school. But outside pressure and… some inside goofs have forced us to raise the Pokémorphs, and that's why we're here. We are all responsible, and thus we need to fairly distribute the morphs between us for rearing. Any questions?"

Apparently not.

"Good. Well, in the past weeks we have observed that the fetuses, which are currently growing in an artificial uterus in the lab, are developing at slightly different speeds, usually a little abnormal for humans. This was to be expected, as Pokémon grow a lot faster than humans, but it is different for each one how much influence the Pokémon is having and of course exactly how fast the Pokémon grows. We have also seen how they appear to be turning out and compared it with what we were going for when we created that morph to give the best idea possible of what you'll be getting yourselves into if you adopt each one. Any questions now?"

"Actually, yes."

It was Cheryl Jones, a woman in her thirties that Howard, a research assistant for Heywood Labs, had been seeing recently. She had also, according to Howard, always been passionately interested in the Pokémorph project. She was one of those intelligent blondes who wore glasses, liked to protest and did volunteer jobs.

"If the Pokémorphs are developing at abnormal speeds now, does that necessarily mean they keep developing like that after they're born?"

"We've been able to calculate fairly well how fast they'll age after birth and that's what we'll be telling you," Dave replied. "We compare how fast the fetus is growing with the normal fetus growth speed of humans and that Pokémon, and then assume their Pokémon half will influence their later growth to about the same extent. It may not be entirely accurate, but it should be accurate enough."

Cheryl nodded and Dave scanned the room for any signs that somebody else had a question.

"Okay, let's just get right to it, then," he sighed and pressed a key on his laptop to go to the next slide; Sarah Hooter disappeared from the wall and was replaced by information about the first morph to be discussed.

"First up, Meowth morph. Male. It is presumed that he'll be around twelve years old physically at ten human years of age. We're not sure exactly how much we influenced any instincts or what, but be warned that at worst he'll be marking his territory around the house by the time he's a teenager and you'll be morally restricted from getting him neutered."

A few of them laughed.

"I meant that," Dave said. "His appearance should be mostly human; it's mainly the head. He'll probably have fangs, and we're beginning to see the development of Meowth ears and tail… and although it hasn't started appearing yet in the fetus, he'll almost definitely have whiskers and a gold charm on his forehead like we planned. I won't guarantee he's not going to be any cattier than that, though, since sometimes it's a bit shady how those genes end up influencing one another. Any volunteers to take him?"

There was silence as the researchers looked nervously at one another. He saw Joe McKenzie's wife Pamela, a plump woman with curly brown hair, whisper something in his ear and he whispered something back. They waited for a few moments.

"Okay, we'll take him," Joe said finally.

"Great," Dave said, writing it down. "It's probably a good thing, since you've raised two kids already. If anybody can toilet train him, it's you."

Another round of nervous laughter. Joe nervously wiped his glasses with his sleeve and put them back on.

"Right," Dave sighed. "Now… that lovely Sarah Hooter-clone I mentioned. Damn, I must have been on crack when I thought of that."

Nobody said anything.

"Oh, yeah, forgot the details. Well, it's a female Vulpix morph, obviously, and basically she'll look almost exactly like that Sarah Hooter picture I showed you," he put that slide back up, "except I can't guarantee she'll look that hot. And I don't know if her hair will really curl like that. Like the Meowth, she'll be around twelve physically in ten years."

Jane leant in at him. "Maybe we should take her, honey."

He turned around. "Why?"

She shrugged, and Dave was momentarily captivated by the smooth movement of her wavy, red hair. "I always liked those books as a kid, and at least she's mixed with a cute Pokémon. We'll have to take one, won't we? At least it's better than some of the others you've been telling me about."

"Whatever you say, sweetheart," Dave replied and kissed her before writing that down. Man, he'd do anything for that woman, even if she read stuff like Sarah Hooter.

"Two down, six to go," he said. "Okay, this is one of the really fast-growing ones. Scyther morph, female. Likely to be physically around sixteen in ten years. Don't worry; she won't be a cripple with no hands who murders people every time she waves her arms. Her hands are already beginning to develop, but sometime after birth, the bone in her forearms will grow out of her skin in a sharp blade going from her wrist to her elbow which then transforms to be metallic if how the process works in actual Scyther is any indication. We don't know how far out it will go exactly, but I think it's safe to say you shouldn't hug her too much. She may have fangs and will almost certainly have wings, although she'd be way too heavy to actually fly on them. Her legs also look very weird right now, although I don't know what will become of them later, since this wasn't really planned. Any takers?"

"Let's take her, Howard," Cheryl said almost immediately. "I've always liked Scyther."

The slightly chubby, dark-haired man beside her winced. "Eh… are you sure we…"

"Oh, come on," she said and smiled. "We'll be fine."

"Anybody want to argue with that? No? Good. Then she's yours."

Howard still looked a little skeptical, but shrugged. "Well, nobody will be able to say I had an uninteresting life."

"Next up, Taillow morph," Dave said. "It's a male. Growing just a little faster than a human, might end up maybe one year ahead for every ten human years…"

"One other question," Cheryl interrupted. "Kids grow up at different speeds, start puberty at different ages and stuff like that, so…"

"This is just an approximation," Dave answered in the middle of her sentence. "The odds little Taillow guy here will have started puberty at ten will be the same as the odds of a normal boy having started puberty at eleven. That's all it means. Can I continue now?"

She nodded.

"Great. Well, I think this is the most human morph of them all. It's pretty much just that he might grow feathers instead of hair in some places, and he'll have a pair of wings too small to carry him, unless we missed something. We realized when we were making them that it would be too difficult to give him a beak as we were first planning. Of course I can't say anything about behavioral effects."

Daniel, a blond-haired man with glasses who Dave knew was the husband of lab researcher Martha Harrison, suddenly raised his hand. "Wait. Are they going to be like… able to use Pokémon attacks?"

Dave sighed. "Maybe. If at all, then only to a very limited extent. I think I could make out a fire sac beginning to form in the Vulpix, so I'm getting my hopes up that she'll at least be able to use Ember and stuff like that. For the others, I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. Of course some things are just a given – everybody can tackle."

"What about the Pokémon language? Will they speak it?"

"No idea. Can I continue?"

Daniel sighed disappointedly and nodded.

"Where was I…" Dave muttered, going over the points on the slide that was up. "Right. Yeah, he's the most human of the bunch, but I can't promise you he won't demand a bowl of earthworms for breakfast every morning or something. Who wants him?"

Daniel shrugged, twisting a lock of his wife's curly black hair between his fingers. "Didn't you say you were mostly handling that one, Martha? Maybe we can take the kid…"

"Sure," she replied and smiled. "Unless somebody else wants him…?"

Most people just shrugged. Nobody protested, even though Dave could tell some of them would have wanted that boy. He had been kind of hoping for him himself, but if Jane wanted the Vulpix, that was it.

"All right, then," Dave said and wrote that down before switching slides. "So… Chinchou morph. Male. He'll be physically around thirteen after ten human years. The most noteworthy unhuman thing about him is that he's blue, and he's got those anglerfish antennae starting to develop too. His hands and feet are a little odd and may end up kind of halfway between fins and digits or something, I don't know. As in webbed with weak fingers. Otherwise he's pretty humanlike – he hasn't got Chinchou eyes or anything. Volunteers?"

"We'll take him," Bill Ray said. He had shoulder-length black hair and was sitting at the far end of the table with his red-haired fiancée Sharon. From the sound of it they had decided on the Chinchou together before they had come there. At twenty-five, Bill was the youngest person working in the lab, two years younger than Dave himself. Dave had always liked the guy, but couldn't help being a little surprised that he'd picked the Chinchou of all things. He'd thought Bill would be more of a Scyther person.

"Well, okay," Dave just said and wrote that down. "Now… after this there's a Pokémorph assigned to every home except Brian's, correct? Well, he can't breastfeed, so now some of you – us, I mean – will have to take another one. Only do it if you think you can handle two freak kids in your home in addition to whatever you might have already, okay?"

Nobody spoke.

"All right. Only three morphs left. Next," he pressed a key on his laptop to go to the next slide, "the only one who's actually growing slower than an ordinary human. Only take her if you really like young children, because she's going to be one for a while. Misdreavus morph, female, will probably grow at only about 80 the speed of a normal human after birth. She's unnaturally pitch-black – as in much blacker than an ordinary black person – but otherwise the fetus looks, well, entirely human at this stage, aside from growing slowly. She is going to have creepy hair and eyes when she grows up and will probably do some ghostly shit, though." He looked between the couples around the table. Cheryl looked excitedly at Howard.

"Well, we already took the Scyther," he said and sighed. "Won't get a lot more messed-up than that. We'll take her."

Cheryl leant in and kissed him. Howard seemed thoroughly puzzled at himself, but didn't say anything to indicate a change of mind, so Dave shrugged and wrote it down.

"Okay, great. Two left, and then we can all go home." He switched slides. "Roselia morph. Female. She's the fastest-growing of the bunch; she'll be physically around seventeen when she's ten. She is a little problematic, because we actually got stupid enough to give her roses instead of hands."

"Oh, dear," he heard Daniel Harrison mutter.

"Then she seems to grow faster in sunlight. That's pretty much it about her, although she may turn out to have some other Roselia or generally flowery traits in the end. She does grow rather ridiculously fast, though. Don't know what they'll do with her at school, although that applies to the Scyther as well. Who's up for it?"

"Let's take her, Daniel," Martha said to her husband. "I had a big part in making her, too. The Taillow boy probably won't be too hard to deal with."

"But we do have Sarah…" Daniel muttered. Sarah was their baby daughter.

"The Roselia girl is going to grow fast. She'll be an adult in no time at all. We're both parents and breeders, so we're the best-equipped here. Dave and Jane and Bill and Sharon are so young and have never raised kids before. They shouldn't need to have two Pokémorphs to worry about. And the McKenzies have two kids to deal with in addition to their morph."

Her husband finally agreed to it, and then that was settled. Dave breathed in relief to himself; he had been worrying that he and Jane would have to take another one.

"Well," he said. "The last one. The Slugma boy. The bad part is that he's pretty much a total failure; it's lucky – or unlucky, depending on how you look at it – that he's survived at all to this point. For one thing, his skin is looking to be liquid – as in some kind of thick ooze. This ooze appears to slowly harden at room temperature, which would make him immobile unless his skin is rubbed or heated or something. In addition to that, his blood is far too hot, so he's really just begging for some sort of organ failure at some point. The organs do seem to be developing some resistance to it, and we'll have to hope that's enough. Oh, and we had to take him out of the artificial uterus and put him in a heated glass cage. Somehow he's already self-sustaining, although if something attacked him at this stage he'd obviously be completely helpless. We don't even know if we should consider him already born or what, and we have no idea how his physical age is going to change. Basically we've got some sort of a human blob and we have no idea what is going to happen to it next."

The spouses stared at him in horror.

"Yeah, his life is going to suck," he agreed. "If for any reason you are ever going to try to mix a human being with a blob of lava in the future, don't. But regardless, we can't kill him, so somebody needs to take care of him if he survives."

Nobody volunteered. Dave took a deep breath. He hadn't expected anybody to.

"I think Brian should take him."

The man to his left stared at him. "What? Me? But…"

"This is the only one that's not actually a mammal and won't need to be breastfed," Dave said, sighing. "Look, Brian, you were the one who messed up the talk show. It would be very unfair if you could avoid raising one of the stupid things just because you're single. No easily accessible breast milk? This one doesn't need any. From what I've heard about Slugma, they eat nothing but rocks throughout their lives. Feeding him sand has worked for a couple of months, so that appears to be it. You can raise him."

Brian looked wildly around for some supporters, but found only the others' looks of pity. Of course they wouldn't switch with him if they were paid for it.

"Fine," he sighed hopelessly and sank back in his chair.

"All settled, then," Dave said, closing his laptop and turning the projector off. He had assigned the Slugma kid to Brian before they had even sat down at the meeting.

"Vulpix morph," he muttered to himself. "This will be interesting."


	3. Chapter 3

"I can't stand this, Dave!" Jane said desperately. Her smooth face was tearstruck and her beautiful blue eyes were red and puffy. "I hate that freak!"

"Please, Jane, be reasonable…" Dave began in the most soothing voice he could manage, but was cut off.

"Reasonable! It's all you think about, isn't it?" She sniffed. "Your precious science and career! Keeping a journal of every little thing that little bitch does! You write happily about how she's teething, and meanwhile I'm getting hormone injections every day and her fangs are digging into my nipples, just because you still insist on her being fed 'naturally' for your stupid research! Everything was so much better before the freak came along and we could spend our time together without the stupid howls waking us up at night!"

"I'd do anything for you, Jane!" Dave pleaded, trying to approach her. "Just please, don't drop her…"

"You're too caught up in your job now to do anything for me!" she screamed, still waving the Pokémorph baby threateningly over the balcony handrail. The Vulpix morph screamed as loudly as she could. "We haven't even had the time to sit down and give her a proper name…"

Jane started crying again. Dave hated situations like this. He'd never been able to handle them properly.

"Please, Jane, I love you," he muttered, taking a few steps nearer to her. "Why can't her name just be Jane too as I've been saying?"

"I'm not sure I love you anymore," she said quietly and continued to sob. He felt his heart sting.

"Don't say that," he said, laying a hand on her shoulder and moving her other hand that threatened to drop the Pokémorph safely within the balcony. "We'll sit down together and talk. Everything will be better…"

"No, it won't," she sobbed. "You said that last time, too, and it just stayed the same."

"No, it didn't, until you started complaining about nothing again! Why do you keep having these ridiculous hysteria fits about everything?" slipped out of Dave in frustration. He regretted it immediately; Jane pushed his hand off her shoulder and turned away.

"Sorry, I didn't mean that…"

Jane threw the baby into his hands and stormed back into the apartment.

"Wait, Jane!" Dave called desperately, running in after her with the morph squirming in his hands. "I really didn't mean it! I haven't slept for days! I was just…"

"Goodbye, Dave," she called over her shoulder.

"No, please, don't leave…"

The door slammed. Dave stared at it.

He bit his lip and blinked a few times to clear his eyes out. "Fuck," he muttered.

The baby still howled. Momentarily, he felt that maybe Jane had had the right idea and felt an urge to throw it at the wall or out of the window as hard as he could, but had the sense to stop himself. He tried for a couple of seconds to keep it in and then gave up.

"Fuck!" he screamed at the clothing rack. Then at the bawling Vulpix morph in his hands, "I hope you're happy, you little freak!"

She continued to howl for food. He looked at her for a few seconds and didn't have the energy to be angry anymore. He quickly splashed some infant formula milk from the refrigerator into a baby bottle and fed her absent-mindedly; after a moment he opened the refrigerator again and got out a few cans of beer that he put onto the table before closing the fridge with his foot.

He suddenly realized that the little Vulpix girl was already asleep. Everything seemed so unreal that he hadn't noticed.

"Fuck," he muttered again, carried her into the bedroom and put her down on the bed before taking out his cellphone and entering Jane's number. He slumped down on one of the couches in the living room, still staring at the number on the screen.

"Later," he muttered to himself. "When she's gotten over it." Then he added, as if to reassure himself, "She always does."

Admittedly she had never before gone quite as far as to walk out of the apartment on him. She had locked herself in the bathroom and refused to come out, and she had verbally told him she was going to leave, but she had never actually left.

"She always gets over it," he repeated, retrieved a can of beer from the kitchen table and opened it. "She loves me…"

And he took a good, long sip.

* * *

He awoke to the muffled crying of the morph from the bedroom and found himself lying in an awkward position on the couch with a couple of empty cans on the table. He could only really remember one of them. He'd been too sleep-deprived to notice exactly how much he was drinking.

Dave groaned and stood up, rubbing his eyes. He checked his watch; it was one in the morning. He walked sleepily towards the bedroom and pushed the half-open door ajar. The Vulpix morph was flailing her arms and legs and screaming at the top of her lungs.

"What is it you want this time?" he said disdainfully. "Need your diaper changed? More food, you greedy little bitch? Or are you just screaming for your mommy because your daddy isn't good enough for you?"

He left the room, got his cellphone out and dialed Jane's number again.

_"Hello?"_ he heard her voice.

"Jane?"

There was a long sigh on the other end of the line.

"Look, Jane, I'm sorry," Dave said. "I slept a little… please tell me you're coming back."

_"Not while the freak is there,"_ he heard her say.

"I can ask one of the others to take her."

There was a long silence.

_"I don't love you anymore, Dave,"_ she said softly. He gripped the phone tighter, squeezing it like he could make it tell him Jane was saying something else. _"You get so stupid when you drink…"_

"I'll stop drinking," he said immediately.

_"…and you seem to be married to your job…"_

"I'll quit my job."

_"…like on our anniversary, when you begged like a child to get to watch that horrible debate…"_

"I'll never watch TV again."

_"…and those few times we do get to be alone together, all you think about is sex."_

"I'll…"

He stopped. No, he wouldn't.

"Look, Jane," he said instead, "maybe there are some things where you're the one who needs to come towards my needs…"

She sighed again on the other end. _"Goodbye, Dave. Don't call me."_

And she hung up.

The bitch.

He closed the cellphone and threw it at the couch. "Fucking bitch!" he shouted at the phone.

He hurried over to the refrigerator and opened it, but didn't find any alcohol. He closed it again and wasn't sure what he'd do. Finally he went into the bedroom to the still-crying Pokémorph baby and collapsed onto the bed next to her.

"Jane…" he moaned. He was silent for a long while, listening obliviously to the cries of the little Vulpix girl.

"It's just you and me now, isn't it, little Jane?" he muttered, turning to the child. "Jane…"

He winced. "No, I really can't call you Jane. Not quite that, anyway. Too much painful association."

Dave looked at his adoptive daughter. Her tiny fangs were visible in her open mouth and whitish hair was already growing on her head and organizing itself into unnatural curls. He sat up and stroked her face carefully, scratching behind her triangular ear; her mouth latched on to his finger and instinctively started to suck on it. He smiled briefly and stroked her one soft, white tail that would one day split into six and gain color.

"How about something more like… Jean?"

The baby was quiet, still sucking on his finger in an attempt to get milk out of it. He decided to take that as a yes.

"God, I'm unoriginal when I'm halfway sober," he muttered to himself as he went into the kitchen to make some more formula milk.

* * *

"Hello?" Dave grumpily answered the telephone. "I'm kind of going out the door, if you don't mind…"

_"You're the guardian of Jean Ambrose, the Vulpix Pokémorph, correct?"_ said the voice on the phone.

"Uh, yes…?"

_"Good afternoon. I'm from Rayquaza Studios, and we have just bought the rights to filming the Sarah Hooter books. We would be ready to pay very handsomely if you would agree to signing a contract for your daughter to be in the main role – in a few years when the script is ready and everything, of course…"_

Dave chuckled. "Isn't this a little early to start making contracts? Or did your Xatu foresee that she'll be a great actress when she's a teenager?"

_"Publicity, you know,"_ the person on the other end said. _"Putting some girl in a costume is both more of a bother and much less intriguing for the fans, you know. Nobody expects kid actors to actually be any good. What matters is that the kids will love to know that Sarah Hooter in the movie is actually real! They'll be able to go meet her! Of course, there is always the problem of how to do the scenes before she's transformed – we'd either need an actress who looks a lot like her or to digitally remove her Vulpix features…"_

"Look, I'm busy, and I really think you should speak with her about this sometime when she's ready, okay?" Dave sighed and hung up. "Stupid media. Who in their right mind would want to film that crap?"

"Daddy?" asked Jean. "Are we going yet?"

"Yes, sweetheart," he replied and took her tiny hand.

* * *

"I'm here to see Mr. Rogers."

The lady behind the desk took one glance at Jean, who was standing on tiptoe, peeking up past the edge and looking at her with big, round, chestnut-brown eyes.

"Go right in, Mr. Ambrose. He's been expecting you."

"Come on, Jean."

He led her to a door on the left, adorned with large black letters.

"P-R-I-N-C-I-P-A-L," Jean spelled as Dave hesitantly turned the doorknob.

"That's right, sweetie," he said as he opened the door, ruffling the curls of her now-red hair. "You're so smart."

She beamed up at him as they walked into the office. A balding, elderly man was writing something by a desk straight ahead; the wall behind it was covered completely in intimidating bookshelves. Jean looked curiously around the room, perking her ears.

The man looked up. "Sit down, Mr. Ambrose."

Dave sat down on one of the small chairs in front of the desk and motioned to Jean to take the other.

"So," the principal said. "Your daughter. You applied for schooling for her, correct?"

Dave just nodded, watching the man carefully. "A problem with the paperwork?"

"No, no," Mr. Rogers said, waving his hand casually. "But…" He looked at Jean's curious face and then back at Dave. "You must understand that your daughter is quite unusual."

"Oh, I get it," Dave said coldly. "You don't want her in your school, do you?"

The principal peered at him through electric blue eyes. "My personal opinion is hardly a matter worth discussing, Mr. Ambrose," he replied, "as this is a public school."

"Then what is the problem? Trying to find some other excuse not to take her?"

"How old did you say she was again?" Mr. Rogers asked, ignoring Dave's comment.

"Five," Dave replied, "but her development happens a little faster than that of an ordinary human being, so she is capable of all the mental tasks of a six-year-old. I've taught her the alphabet, too, and plan to have her able to read fluently by the time she starts school."

"I see," the principal replied ambiguously, collecting some papers from his desk into a stack and placing it aside. "Well, the law for public schools says that potential students are only to be denied admission or expelled from the school if they seem to be repeated troublemakers or of insufficient intellect to keep up with others in their grade…"

"Get to the point."

"Well," Mr. Rogers said, not without a hint of annoyance, "does she… light things on fire, intentionally or unintentionally? Does she bite people? Does she use the toilet as one would expect of other students?"

Dave looked at him for a second and then laughed. "You know, I know exactly what you're thinking. It's what I was thinking before I got to know those kids. Now that I do know them, I can testify that they're more pleasant company than half of the morons you let into your school just because they happen to be fully human. And for the record, she may learn Fire attacks in the future, but doesn't know any yet, and if she did, she wouldn't use them."

The principal cleared his throat. "Mr. Ambrose, I do hope you can understand why we don't allow children to bring weapons to school."

"Well, yeah, but the fact the morphs can't remove their 'weapons' is a very crucial point," Dave argued. "Both the obvious fact that either they're going to school with them or not at all, and that the reason you have something to worry about when a normal child brings a weapon to school is that they wouldn't be bringing a weapon if they didn't intend to use it. I mean, true, the morphs would be easily able to smuggle a 'weapon' in if they felt like doing somebody harm, but how often does a well-raised kid really feel that way? Feel free to expel them if they try to use them, but my daughter has a right to professional education as long as she isn't hurting anyone."

Mr. Rogers did not look convinced. "Anything that is that easily able to attack the other children should not be in a public school."

"I told you, she can't use fire yet. You can reconsider when she learns it if you absolutely have to, sure, but according to our calculations that is not likely to be until she's a teenager from the way her fire sac is maturing…"

The principal sighed. "Fine, but what about biting? Or any other… what to call it, 'Pokémonlike' behavior?"

"She'll bite under exactly the circumstances an ordinary kid would bite and no more often than that," Dave replied irritably. "She behaves like a human in all but very insignificant ways. I mean, she snarls and bares her fangs when she's provoked sometimes, but I'd laugh if you tried to use that as an excuse not to accept her into your school."

"I'm bored," Jean whispered from Dave's side, looking up from the paperclips she'd been playing with. "When can we go?"

"Not yet, honey," he replied, his voice dripping with subtle sarcasm. "The nice man doesn't want you to go to school, see."

She looked up at him with an innocent expression of puzzlement. "Why not?"

"I don't know, sweetheart. Why don't you try asking him?"

She turned to Mr. Rogers and looked adorably up at him.

_Just try to tell those puppy eyes that she's a danger to the other students!_ Dave thought triumphantly to himself, trying to hide the amusement in his expression. _Just try!_

The principal didn't try.

"Well, Mr. Ambrose," he finally mumbled, "I suppose if she is really incapable of using fire as you say, there can't be much harm in having her, but for her sake, I must beg you to consider the social issues…"

"I have considered them," Dave replied, "and I came to the conclusion that she would be a great deal better off socially by mingling with some kids of roughly her mental age than if isolated from them."

Mr. Rogers waved his hand hopelessly. "Fine. We'll register her. But I assure you that we will reconsider if she starts burning things. You may leave."

Dave smiled victoriously. "Thank you, Mr. Rogers," he said, took Jean's hand and walked with her out of the room.

"You are a genius," he muttered on the way out with a fond grin. "Classic. Truly masterful timing."

She giggled innocently. "You're always saying weird things."


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note:** Remember that warning before the first chapter about how the fic is going to include sensitive subjects and may offend people? Yeah, that wasn't referring to that little abortion debate. It was referring to what you'll see in this chapter and later.

So again, I will emphasize that this fic is not trying to rant or preach about anything. All there is to it is characters with opinions. You have been warned.

* * *

"We are gathered here today to discuss a desecration of life and of God's Creation. We are here to discuss a most brutal violation of the laws handed down to us from the Holy Spirit when our ancestors fled to the Pokémon world. We are here to discuss abominations against nature and the natural hierarchy where humans rule over Pokémon. I am referring, of course, to the Pokémorphs."

Isaac Daniels looked around the room. It was just the church cellar, mostly used for Sunday school, but religion was always steadily losing its popularity among the young and a few months ago they had canceled Sunday school and instead started to hold meetings for the few attending children in each other's own homes, while the parents had weekly meetings here after having convinced the priest to lend them the room for the purpose. That, incidentally, was why no one had bothered to change all the light bulbs in the room that had gone out. There was only one that still worked and that one only barely: it flickered on and off every now and then, leaving the room in momentary darkness.

It was truly pathetic, he thought, for an institute of such former greatness as the church, that not only were all the influential bishops starting to preach liberalism, hypocrisy and loose interpretations of God's word: the few true believers, when they needed to meet and discuss matters of true spiritual importance, had to do so in secrecy thanks to those appalling free speech-violating hate crime laws, and not only in secrecy, but in a dark, messy church cellar with nonfunctional lights.

"The Pokémorphs," he repeated. "Humans, though created in His image, should not play God, but those propagators of science and evolution of course disregard this as fantasy. I need only cite the very fourteenth Commandment: 'The creatures shall be the humble servants and the men shall be their kind masters: they are distinct by their nature.' It tells us that the Pokémonly and the humanly are to be separate. And we are again warned in the Book of Visions, 21.5: 'And there will be no more distinction between the men and the monsters: the Machoke shall pose as man and lie with the woman as the man.' By creating the Pokémorphs, they have blurred the natural border between humans and Pokémon, and thus brought us one step closer to the looming apocalypse prophesized in the Book of Visions."

He looked over the small group again as they nodded in agreement. "Ten years ago, a semi-religious movement chose to fight for the unborn Pokémorphs' lives. They chose to do this because they valued the sacredness of life above the clear laws condemning the creation of those creatures. But this was based on a misunderstanding. It is, after all, the Lord's creation and the miracle of natural conception that are things of sacredness; lives created by Man, as the Pokémorphs have, only violate His laws by their very existence. He must be frowning upon us now for having let them live and poison their surroundings for ten years, having let them go to school with our children…"

"One of them was in my daughter's class," a woman commented. "I had to have her moved to a different class. Apparently many other parents were doing the same, so they were having difficulties keeping the class together. It's good to know there are still sensible parents around."

Isaac nodded. "That does not, however, justify their existence, and the Lord has given us some signs to emphasize this. Mia Kerringan the Scyther Pokémorph, in particular, has shown herself to be a creature of evil, as she has now twice attempted to attack innocent religious children at the school they go to when they tried to expose her to the Word of God. I believe our very own Monica Sellers is the mother of one of the children." He nodded towards a plump woman with curly red hair.

"She threatened him with her blades…" she sobbed in response as the gathering looked quietly at her.

"The liberal media and the brainwashed public have already accepted the existence of the Pokémorphs. Already, large companies have offered Jean Ambrose the Vulpix Pokémorph the title role in the upcoming films based on the 'Sarah Hooter' books, which have already been established to be spreading Pokémon-superiority propaganda and messages of hate towards the righteous. Additionally, some of the scientists responsible for the experiments have expressed that they do not regret creating the Pokémorphs and shown enthusiasm towards the idea of future genetic experiments. First and foremost, it is David Ambrose, the leader of the original Pokémorph project."

Isaac looked around the room. A couple of people shuddered at the mention of the name.

"You have all noticed him in the media. Atheist and staunch supporter of the scientific worldview. Some of the other scientists were religious as children but then lost their faith (and in fact a couple claim to be liberal believers), but he never believed. He has ridiculed people of faith in public on multiple occasions, is known to drink excessively at times although not as often as he used to, and is a good enough debater to have weaseled every single one of the Pokémorphs into our public schools. He has also proclaimed the manmade Pokémorph children to be superior to naturally conceived children and wants to legalize genetic experiments with human embryos. It is clear that his anger towards God has grown extremely violent, and he seems prepared to do just about anything to get his revenge on the creation. He is more dangerous than all the morphs, simply because he is an adult and can create more of them. Now that he has defended Mia Kerrigan the Scyther Pokémorph after her vicious attacks on the other children twice and managed to force the school to keep her, it has become clear that he must be stopped at all costs. The safety of our children, and of the future world, is at stake."

A few of the men nodded in agreement, but Isaac noticed a woman looking doubtfully up at him.

"I hope you understand what kind of action I am suggesting we take here. Ladies, what remains is a discussion for the men. You may leave early today."

There was a short silence as the women looked around at their husbands, but none objected. The sound of chairs scraping the floor echoed off the walls as they stood up to leave. Isaac even held the door open for them. He was a gentleman at heart.

There was no doubt in his mind that he was going to do the right thing, no fear of being caught and sent to prison. He wouldn't have budged even if those darned liberals hadn't gotten the death penalty abolished a couple of centuries ago. The Lord had visited him in his dream and told him to do it. It was his ultimate purpose in life.

David Ambrose had to die.

* * *

Katherine Harrison dropped her pencil.

She hissed at her hand. Even now, when she had been practicing it for seven years, it was still happening at least around once a week at school.

She pushed her hand down on top of the pencil that was now lying on her desk and tried to get her flaplike fingers to grab hold of it properly. The rustling gave it away altogether too loudly, but the teacher had gotten so used to it that she only glanced briefly at Katherine, rolled her eyes quickly and continued talking. The other students briefly looked over at her. It was only because it was autumn. By Christmas, this year's classmates would all be so used to it that the sound wouldn't register in their brains anymore.

She finally managed to fish the pencil up with the petals of her blue rose and awkwardly positioned it so that she would be able to write with it before resuming taking down notes. Scritch scritch. Sometimes she really hated her mother and her coworkers. She wasn't only a Roselia Pokémorph with fingers that were more like weak petal-like flaps she couldn't do much with and attracted rather a lot of attention along with the large green thorns sticking out of her head: she also grew so fast that she had been forced to go through twelve years' worth of schooling in only seven years. Just how difficult was it possible to make school for one's potential daughter before her birth? And to boot, she was _left-handed_. That just really took the cake, although her mother had sworn many times that the left-handedness had not been intentional.

Well, it was not like it wasn't technically the Stop Abortion Movement's fault, anyway, in an ironic way, although out of her mother's coworkers, only Dave had ever gotten tasteless enough to actually mention that in his defense. Theirs and Brian's. Katherine snorted. Oh, yes, Dave. Of course everything is always everybody's fault but yours. It's not like the person who thought of doing illegal genetic experiments in the first place is to blame for anything at all. No way. He just provided the genius behind the first ever successful gene-splicing in complex species. No relation at all to the consequences.

Of course she had to admit she was sometimes grateful for Dave. He was the most enthusiastic fighter trying to allow the Pokémorphs to lead a semi-normal life of the bunch and he had managed to talk all of the morphs' way into public schools despite their obvious difficulties, whether in the form of their physical and mental capabilities developing at supernatural speed, their hands being roses or their arms having blades on them. That, she had to admit, was definitely something. There was no way anybody but Dave could have convinced the schools to let Mia in and to keep her after she very nearly slashed her schoolmates to shreds. Twice. Hell, she was a Pokémorph herself and still wouldn't hesitate to conclude that Mia had simply shown herself to be extremely dangerous to whoever came within a two-meter radius of her. Sometimes she seriously wondered if Dave was using hypnosis or something.

She realized she'd been letting her mind wander way too much; she had stopped taking down notes long ago and was now just staring emptily out the window that she had to be seated by for her thorns to photosynthesize. She had difficulty concentrating when she didn't have sunlight shining on her.

She was pretty messed up and would have a very difficult life compared to everybody else, she had long ago realized. But really, she couldn't do anything about it, and couldn't help thinking she'd rather be there and have some difficulties picking up pencils than have been aborted as a fetus or even never have existed at all. And heck, even though most people at school must have gotten the impression that having roses for hands was hell, it only really got annoying when it came to holding and controlling small objects like pencils. At least she _could_ move the petals with some force when she used them right. She was still practising to be able to play the violin, and was starting to see a little success.

At least, she thought to herself when she turned back to the teacher to continue taking down notes, she was not Gabriel.

* * *

"Hey, uh…"

Gabriel turned around, looking at a little brown-haired kid he hadn't seen before who seemed, from the looks of it, to be extremely nervous. A few other kids around his age were standing a short distance away, watching.

"Your… you know…" The kid pointed at Gabriel's hair.

"Let me guess, it's on fire?" Gabriel asked dully, blindly slapping the front of his spiky red hair with his hand as the kid nodded timidly. He tried his best to stroke his hair back so it wouldn't get too close to the flames above his eyebrows again. Not that he expected it to be successful for any considerably stretch of time. He had, after all, been trying to keep his hair out of those flames for ten years now, and it always managed to get back into the fire after a while.

"Thanks," he said to the kid and turned to leave.

"And… um…"

"What? My hands dripping again?" Gabriel sighed as he turned his head.

"Yeah."

He looked down at his left hand, which was dripping warm orangeish goo onto the ground.

"Oh. Sorry. It happens." He hurriedly smeared the slime up his arm with his other hand and then looked at the kid and the group that was still goggling at him. "Let me guess, just finished your first day of school here?"

The kid nodded, still looking at him with wide, terrified eyes.

"Well, I suggest you get used to it," Gabriel told him and prepared to leave again.

"So are you the… the…"

"Yes, I'm the Slugma Pokémorph," Gabriel replied with a sigh. "Please try not to make me angry at any point in the future, because if my body temperature gets any higher than it is, I happen to have a very uncomfortably high risk of major organ failure."

The kid ran for it. Gabriel smiled grimly after him.

"My life sucks," he sighed as he headed towards his home.


	5. Chapter 5

Mia Kerrigan sat on a bench at the edge of the school grounds. For most kids, free periods were their favourite time of the school day. And so had they been for her the first couple of years.

Then her scythes had started to grow, and the other kids had grown deathly afraid of her, something she could not really relate to personally but could, in a limited sense, understand.

On its own that was perhaps not too bad, since she had never been a particularly social person and initially it had been very satisfying to see all the gawking eyes averted as soon as she glanced in their general direction. The bad part was that it wasn't until they became afraid of her that the Nutjobs had begun to feel some sense of martyrdom (an idea which they, for some reason she could not quite grasp either, seemed to feel oddly attracted to) in trying to explain to her why she was a vile creature of Hell.

And that was why she felt her glossy yellow insect wings begin to twitch that day when she realized that the Nutjobs were approaching her.

The boy she had attacked the last time was absent from the group, and she felt a hint of dark pride in herself. The oldest of them, a sixteen-year-old girl with square-rimmed glasses and long brown hair tied into a ponytail, was still there, however, and this year she had gathered a few new followers.

Mia said nothing as they came within a few feet of the bench.

"Still here?" the girl asked with contempt in her voice. Mia noticed a small blond-haired boy with large blue eyes standing in the group and looking at her with an expression almost of pity.

"Frank left because of you, you know," the girl went on. "He didn't want to come back. His mom put him into a different school. I hope you're happy."

Mia looked at the little boy, who looked back at her. He bit his lip, but didn't show any other sign of being afraid.

She liked him.

"He was my friend."

The little boy blinked his large blue eyes slowly, surveying her, his expression still a strange blend of interest and sad pity.

"What's wrong with you? Why don't you ever answer when people talk to you?"

Mia's eyes darted up at her and her head slowly followed. She could see the muscles under the skin in the girl's exposed neck tensing in anger, her posture stiffening slightly. The little boy glanced up at her and then back at Mia.

"You can talk!" the girl shouted. Her fingers curled into fists, her knuckles whitened. "Say something!"

"What?" Mia replied, her attention now focusing on the sinews in the girl's neck shifting as she swallowed.

"I know you aren't one of God's creations," the girl replied with a slight jerk of her head, her voice shaking slightly. Her ponytail swished around behind her for a second but quickly came to a stop. "But if you turn to him, he will accept you like any of his children. You can be good and you will be forgiven. How you were created doesn't matter. Everybody is the same before God. I don't know why you do the… things you do. Maybe you… you've got demons inside of you or… something."

The way the girl's gaze shifted as she said the last sentence betrayed undeniable scepticism. She didn't really believe there were any demons. Mia could tell. That girl was confused and bitter, and had never gotten to Mia much, not even last year when she had been a lot more violent and actually punched her or the times when she had screamed about the eternal fires of Hell. It was the boy that bothered her more, that boy who wasn't like the other cronies. The way he looked at her, sad, pitying.

"There is no God," Mia just replied, watching both the girl and the boy. The girl flinched at the words, as if she had just been stung. The boy closed his eyes for a moment, ever-so-slightly shaking his head, knowingly, like it was Mia who was the one with the empty faith in imaginary friends in the sky. Something about it irritated her. Why was she to be pitied? She liked that boy. He wasn't supposed to irritate her.

"Leave me alone," she said, looking straight at him. He looked back at her and then stepped slowly forward. Mia's arms automatically twitched into a defensive position, ready to slash, despite the wooden sheath bound around her forearms that covered her small blades from wrist to elbow and rendered them harmless. The boy didn't blink. His eyes looked straight at hers, searched them, flicking now and then to the bony horns sticking out of her green hair and the sheathed blades on her arms.

"Get away from me," she growled, her arm twitching. She would have hit him, except that she still liked him and didn't want to.

"I feel sorry for you," he told her, unblinking. Mia saw the brown-haired girl jerk her head down toward the boy, her bitter expression blending with surprise.

The boy took another step.

Mia jerked her arm towards him, but another girl from the group with the same blond hair and slightly smaller blue eyes, most likely his sister, pulled him back and jumped in front of him so that the sheath covering Mia's scythe hit the side of her arm instead. There wasn't much force in the blow and the girl wasn't hurt, but she gave Mia just the expression that she had found most typical of the Nutjobs in her time dealing with them.

"Listen, you freak," she said as she threw Mia's arm away, standing so close to her that Mia could smell the blood rushing to her face, "I know you can't hurt anyone with that on your scythes, but we're going to get you out of this school, no matter what. You contaminate it with evil. You should be locked up somewhere away from real people where you can't hurt them, and…"

Without thinking, Mia bared her teeth and snarled, a reaction that to her felt more natural than she knew it ought to. The girl recoiled slightly, clenching her jaws. "You can't hurt us," she repeated under her breath, more to herself than to Mia. "You can't hurt us. They put that on your arms so you couldn't."

Mia knew it was a bad idea, but she growled, jerked her left hand up to the leather straps tying the sheath to her right hand and began to tear wildly at them. The Nutjobs took only a fraction of a second to realize what she was doing and immediately turned around to speed up to the school building. The blond-haired girl had to practically drag her brother with them.

She ripped the sheath fully off and felt the cool air around her exposed scythe. It felt good. The blade itched for something to cut, but the Nutjobs were already gone.

She looked around, straight into the eyes of the teacher currently on watch who was standing by the wall a few meters away, his face pale and sweaty as he picked up his cellphone and dialled what she knew to be Dave's number.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes to calm down, shaking her head to clear it, but it was already too late.

* * *

"Mr. Ambrose, surely you can understand that this is unacceptable."

"I don't see why this is any worse than what happened before."

The principal's office was not very big, and the crammed bookshelves that always threatened to collapse and the deathly still, heavy, red curtains in front of the firmly shut windows gave it a distinctly claustrophobic atmosphere that had made her despise the room the moment she had first set foot into it. She was sitting on one of the chairs in the corner with her bare, clawed feet up on the other, examining the blades that poked out through her skin just below her wrists while the men talked it over. She heard the principal sigh.

"Mr. Ambrose, this is the third time this has happened. The first time you assured us it was a one-time occurrence and would never happen again. The second, you told us that for safety we could put on that sheath which would protect any students from potential unconscious outbursts. But now this, too, has proven futile. We have multiple eyewitnesses who will readily swear that she simply took the sheaths off and all that saved her fellow students was that while she was doing so they had time to flee. Surely you cannot expect us to keep her at this school even after this. It is clearly only a matter of time before she murders someone. Frankly I'm afraid of her." He lowered his voice, apparently having deluded himself into thinking her hearing wasn't that much better than an ordinary human being's. "I wouldn't dare take her into this office if you weren't here too, to be honest. The teachers are afraid of teaching her classes. More than one student has come in and expressed great concern or even wish to leave the school." Not that it mattered that she heard it. She had noticed all of that already.

She poked the sharp corner of the scythe right at the elbow where it was widest, just before it sharply turned back into her arm and rejoined the bone. A trickle of crimson blood from her fingertip travelled down the blade and started to glide off her elbow. She wiped it carefully off with the finger it had come from and licked it off from there. She'd always enjoyed the heavy, metallic taste of it.

"You're not getting it," Dave's irritated voice replied. "_They provoked her._ Nobody in their right mind would provoke a half-Scyther. It's their own damned fault, if you ask me."

"All the more reason not to allow half-Scyther into this school, don't you think?"

"She has a right to education."

"Of course she does, but if she can't function among other students, her education may have to be carried out in her private home where she can be kept under control."

A fly buzzed close to her and landed on the wall. Mia's eyes automatically followed it as it crawled upwards in vain hopes of finding open air. She raised her arm slowly.

WHAM.

Dave and the principal jerked their heads around in surprise, abruptly ceasing their conversation. She pulled the short blade out of the wall it had sunk slightly into, letting the two halves of the fly fall down on either side of the resulting crack as a subconscious smile flickered across her face.

It took only a moment for her mind to snap back into human manners, her eyes flicking back to the crack and then to the elderly man in the blue suit standing pale-faced behind the desk. "I didn't like it," she just said.

Dave looked at her for an awkward second and then turned quickly back to the principal. "Eh."

"We are not going to have her at this school anymore, Mr. Ambrose," Mr. Rogers said, watching Mia. He had always been a man who had contained his fear relatively well. He may have been gripping the edge of the desk so tightly that his knuckles whitened, and a bead of sweat was trickling down the side of his forehead, perhaps or perhaps not just because the room was awfully hot for at least her liking, but his voice remained steady and his expression determined. "Please leave. This decision is final. She cannot function at a public school, and you know it as well as I do, Mr. Ambrose."

Dave licked his lips nervously for a second, his gaze travelling a few times from her to the principal and back to her.

"Let's just go," he finally said, offering his hand to Mia. She had always liked it, the way he offered his hand. He did it sincerely and fearlessly, the muscles in his fingers occasionally twitching in protest but his mind inevitably successful in forcing them under control and maintaining the gesture. There was something intrinsically trustworthy in it, more so than in most other people, whose revulsion at the idea of touching her was generally far more obvious. She took his hand and stood up, letting him lead her out of the office and slam the door stubbornly at their backs.

Oh, yes, she liked Dave.

They walked out of the school building to his shiny white car and he walked over to the driver's seat while she silently opened the door on the passenger side and got in.

"Watch the seat, Mia, watch the seat…" Dave muttered as he closed the door on his side.

She looked on either side of her elbows, where the sharp points at the end of her scythes had created a pattern of small holes and tears in the leather through the years, making sure the blades didn't touch it as she buckled the seat belt.

Dave started the engine and drove off the sidewalk where he had carelessly parked the car. He sighed, looking briefly at her with his blue eyes.

"It was the Nutjobs again," she said.

Dave snorted. "It's always them, isn't it? Fucking assholes, constantly shoving their religion down people's throats. I've known too many people like that in my life. Complete retards, all of them."

Mia nodded dully.

"So what was their latest theory about your origins? Have they done demonic possession yet?"

She didn't answer. He looked at her again.

"There was a boy," she said. "I liked him."

Dave raised his eyebrows. "What, did he think you were just a lesser imp and not Satan himself?"

She shook her head absent-mindedly. Dave was peering through the windshield as he turned round a corner and didn't notice.

"Don't listen to them. I've told you, they're batshit insane. You'd get more sense out of Babelfishing a Kadabra on crack. Just don't even try."

She didn't understand them. Religious faith just didn't make any sense. She couldn't feel angry at them, like Dave did. Just baffled at their existence. Why they would want to believe in something they had no evidence for. It was just something she couldn't wrap her head around.

"Goddamn kids," Dave swore under his breath as a group of children scattered from the street in front of them.

"I don't get it," she muttered.

"What?"

"Religion."

"That's because unlike those nutsos you've got some sense in your head."

"My parents believe in God too."

Dave pretended not to have heard her for a few seconds. She watched a fly sit down on the back of his neck. If she slashed at it she could accidentally cut his head off. Haha. Oops.

But she liked him, so she didn't actually do it. And even if she hadn't liked him, there would have been complications. Too obvious who did it. No good Pokémorph sympathizers left to defend her in court. Somebody would point out her mental age of sixteen and say she was responsible for her actions. Everybody else would agree because they wanted to get rid of her. 'That fly was getting on my nerves' had never worked well for her. Jail. Tiny cell with stale air. Nothing decent to eat. It just wouldn't pay.

He turned back to her. The fly took off and instead settled on the car window on his side. "Well, at least your parents don't take it so damned seriously."

She nodded and looked out the window.

"Hey, uh, want a hotdog?"

She shrugged.

"Great," Dave replied and turned round the next corner.

* * *

Howard Kerrigan was doing the dishes when he got the feeling that Lucy was standing behind him. She had a wonderful knack for being quiet and sneaking up on people, but she hadn't yet tamed her abilities enough to stop a faint psychic signal from pushing gently at those she approached, alerting them of her presence. 

He turned around, glanced at her and smiled. "Something bothering you?"

She looked up at him with wide, innocent eyes.

"Daddy, am I an abomination?"

He turned around and stared at her, pushing away the trace of hypnotic power in her eyes. "What? No. Who told you that?"

She pointed at the window above the kitchen sink. "There's a guy with a sign outside in front of the door."

Howard looked back at the window, and indeed, there was a man standing on the sidewalk outside the front door holding a sign that said simply 'VISIONS 21.5'.

He ripped off his rubber gloves and ran to the front door. "Hey!" he shouted heatedly as he opened it, running towards the man. "Don't you dare stand here giving my daughter ideas! Get away from my house right now!"

The protestor looked at him. It was a young man with pale skin and dark hair that would have been handsome if not for the icy coldness in his light blue eyes. Howard fleetingly recognized him as one of the scariest fundamentalists from church, somebody Daniels. He shivered.

"Get away from my house," he repeated sternly. "You are not welcome here."

"Realize what you have done and repent," Daniels said in a quiet, cold voice. "The Pokémorphs are abominations before the Lord. He will make you pay for their creation, sooner or later. You will regret that He ever let you be born."

"Get off my property now."

A crazy glint appeared in the man's piercing eyes. "He has already chosen His instruments. Those of true faith have received their calling. You will be punished."

"I told you to leave."

A smiled flickered across Daniels' features. "The rabbit who refuses to hear of the fox," he said, "will regret it only when she wanders into his lair."

Howard returned his icy stare for a second. He felt cold.

"Very well, Howard," Daniels said quietly. "I see you cannot be persuaded."

"Not by you. Go away."

Daniels opened his mouth, but then flicked his eyes to the side. Howard looked to see Dave's white car pull into their driveway. Both doors opened, and Dave and Mia stepped out. Mia glanced dully at Daniels while Dave pointed at the door to indicate that they needed to talk inside.

"Excuse me," Howard said coldly to Daniels and walked to the door to meet them.

He took a last glance over his shoulder as he turned the key. Daniels looked at Dave with the creepiest grin Howard had ever seen, and then turned slowly around to walk down the street, still holding the daunting sign above his head.


	6. Chapter 6

"So who was that creep?" Dave asked as Howard closed the door behind them. Howard invited Dave and Mia to sit down at the kitchen table and collapsed into his own chair. Lucy the Misdreavus morph waved to Dave from a few meters away and he waved absent-mindedly back to her.

"It's somebody from church," Howard sighed. "Something Daniels. His beliefs are rather… extreme, from what I've seen of them."

"So in other words, he's a nut," Dave said cheerfully. "What did he want?"

"He was trying to scare Lucy, apparently," Howard replied with contempt. "Calling her an abomination. When I came out, he started making threats about the Wrath of God." He shuddered. "I'm not sure whether to take him seriously."

"Don't," Dave just said. "They feed on fear. Don't give them the pleasure of seeing you get worried. What do you think is going to happen, anyway? Is he going to sit somewhere and pray for a meteor to strike you or what? Newsflash: it won't work. Even if God existed, do you think he'd listen to a guy like that?"

"I don't know. He scares me sometimes. He likes to make speeches about how he will rejoice in Heaven at the thought of the infidels burning forever in Hell…"

Dave snorted.

"…but I suppose it would be stupid to worry about him too much," Howard finished with a sigh. "So. What did she do this time?"

"She got kicked out," Dave replied in a tired voice, rubbing his forehead. "For good. She took off the sheaths and they went ballistic. And then chopped up a fly in the principal's office. I think that took the cake."

"Oh, Mia," Howard sighed, looking wearily at his older daughter. "Why do you always get yourself into trouble like that?"

"It was a stupid fly," she answered defensively. "It was too dumb to get out of the way. It deserved it."

"What are we going to do with you now?" her father asked in frustration. "You can't keep doing that all the time, Mia! You need to start learning how to function among normal people, or I'm going to go crazy. I mean it. How are you going to get schooling now? I have three other children to take care of and Cheryl is always…"

"I'll just teach her at home, okay?" Dave interrupted. "There's no need to make a big deal about it and start blaming her. Uh, Mia, why don't you go play with Lucy or something?"

The Pokémorph stood up wordlessly, glanced at the smaller girl and went through a door on the other side of the hall and shut it behind her. Her sister walked after her, disappearing through the closed door as if nothing were more natural.

"Look," Dave said after making sure they were gone, looking back at Howard. "We've been through this. She's basically a biologically defined sociopath. Telling her she needs to learn how to function will at most just irritate her and make her hurt somebody. Please don't push her limits."

"It can get pretty frustrating," Howard answered quietly, glancing back at the door to the girls' room, through which faint giggles could now be heard. "When you have children, you want them to be able to understand how you feel. Think in approximately the same terms… She's so different from the other morphs. Lucy actually feels like a human being, but Mia is just so painfully nonhuman in the way she talks, thinks, acts…" He rubbed his eyes briefly and then blinked a few times. "I mean, I love her. I really do. But… God…" He shook his head. "Somehow I can't give up the idea that I can change her. She _looks_ like she's supposed to be able to function like a human being. My brain likes to think that means she can."

"Well, she can't, and you'll have to live with that," Dave responded and looked around the house. "Is Cheryl around?"

Howard shook his head. "She's out by the town hall protesting the lack of formal action against increased carbon emissions from the city's cars."

Dave rolled his eyes briefly. "Well, I'll get in touch about the homeschooling thing, I suppose. Have to get going now so I'll be in time to get Jean from school."

Howard nodded and stood up, shaking Dave's hand. "Thanks for visiting. And driving her. You know, you do so much for those kids, it's unbelievable."

Dave smiled slightly. "I made them. Least I could do. I'll see you around."

"Goodbye."

And with that, Dave left the house and closed the door behind him. Howard saw him through the window straightening his jacket as he walked back over to his car. "You made them. Right," he muttered to himself.

He sighed and knocked on the door to the girls' room. He waited for a couple of seconds as the laughter quieted before opening it carefully.

Mia, her unsheathed scythe raised, had seemingly stopped mid-motion when he knocked; she stood deathly still, only her eyes pointed towards him. Her sister was standing below her, still grinning childishly.

The father shuddered at the sight. "Dave is gone. He's going to be homeschooling you from now on, Mia."

She didn't answer, but he had grown to expect it. He looked between the two for a second and then said, "You know I don't like this game at all."

With a careless, sweeping motion, without looking away from her father, Mia swung her raised scythe straight through her sister's currently insubstantial forehead. Howard felt his paternal instinct twitch in horror, but Lucy only continued to giggle, grinning happily at her father as if having a blade repeatedly driven through one's head was every sane person's idea of fun.

"I'll leave you to it, I suppose," Howard said, shaking his head. "Lucy, you remember to always stay insubstantial while she's there with you, all right? And the moment you get the least bit tired, you stop before you become unable to keep it up. Is that clear? Let me see you go invisible."

"Yes, Daddy," the small girl answered, her pitch-black form briefly fading to a smoky sort of transparent and then becoming entirely invisible. Invisibility was more taxing for her than insubstantiality; if she could still make herself entirely invisible, it meant she had plenty enough energy to keep up her insubstantial form, and they had agreed on using it as a test. He nodded as she came back into view.

"Please be careful," he said quietly before closing the door to the room again. He heard a high-pitched shriek that made him jump but quickly dissolved into another fit of giggles.

While Mia was generally not very social, she had always been a little closer to her sister than to anyone else, and they got along surprisingly well. Nonetheless, Howard didn't doubt that she could easily end up hurting Lucy in the heat of the moment, and their typical games were just far too violent for comfort: Mia chasing Lucy and trying to slash her; Lucy covering something worthless and easily destructible in the folds of the thin, dress-like extra skin that covered most of her body and running around while Mia would try to slash the object apart; Lucy charging up a primitive Shadow Ball that Mia would slash away before it got to her…

It was all pretty creepy, and while nothing very serious had happened yet, there had been accidents. One time Lucy had gotten hurt when slashed in a semisubstantial state; she had been unable to feel her arm properly for a few days. Another time Mia had slashed her when she hadn't been ready, but thankfully realized it and managed to stop her scythe before it made more than a shallow cut. Mia had lost her balance in mid-slash and hit her head on the floor or walls numerous times. Howard would have forbidden them to do it long ago, but Dave had convinced him that if Mia couldn't let out her hunting instinct (he shuddered to think of it) in some relatively harmless way, she would practically be a ticking bomb, and it would be a good way for the sisters to bond a little more, and for Mia to feel freer and have an easier time forming relationships in general, to let them play these dangerous games together.

Howard couldn't deny that Mia's self-control and Lucy's Misdreavus powers had greatly improved since this had been given the green light, but he still didn't like it. Cheryl took it more lightly, usually brushing it off with some vague kids-can-kill-each-other-in-all-sorts-of-ways-if-they-aren't-careful-but-the-girls-can-handle-this-responsibly-Howard-and-we-should-listen-to-Dave.

"Yeah, you made them, Dave," he muttered to himself as he turned back towards the kitchen sink. "All the way until it's getting inconvenient. Then it's all Brian's fault."

* * *

Incidentally, Brian was also doing the dishes and was currently picking up the last plate from beside the sink. He quickly scrubbed the remains of yesterday's spaghetti off the surface and turned the plate a few times over under the faucet just as he heard the front door open and slam shut again. He put the wet plate down to dry, turned the knob to reduce the stream of water to a trickle and eventually nothing, and pulled the pink rubber gloves off his fingers to lay them down on the edge of the sink. "Gabriel?"

"Hi, Dad," came the weary reply.

"How was school?"

"Decent." Brian heard Gabriel sigh from the entrance as the boy took off his shoes. "Kids are still staring."

"They'll get used to it in a week or two," Brian said as he walked out of the kitchen to meet his son in the doorway. "Oh, your hair…"

Gabriel reached blindly to the top of his head to extinguish the small flame that had gotten into a loose strand of hair. "Gone."

"Yes, gone." Brian looked the boy up and down and sighed with parental pride. "I'm really proud of you, Gabriel," he said for the umpteenth time. Gabriel rolled his eyes, but not without the corners of his mouth curling into a small smile. "When you'd just been made we didn't really think you'd survive, but you've just done so well and been so strong and grown into such a wonderful person." He beamed down at the short boy and was overwhelmed, as so often, by the strange feeling of knowing he'd been raising that kid for the past ten years. It didn't feel like that long, and all the headaches and complications of keeping him alive for the first few years had blurred into a hazy dark period in his memory. He'd been very stressed out then and several times begged Dave to make somebody else raise the Slugma.

Now he was infinitely glad that Dave had steadfastly refused.

"You're the greatest kid in the world, Gabriel."

"You've told me already, Dad," Gabriel said with a weary smile.

"Pizza and a good movie?" Brian asked him with a grin.

"Sounds good," the Pokémorph replied smugly, "but I think my skin is starting to harden, so if you'll excuse me."

Brian smiled and stepped out of the doorway. Gabriel walked into his room and closed the door.

The kid was still high-maintenance, of course. Being what he was, his gooey skin hardened slowly over the day and to counter this he had to massage some heat into the entirety of it at least once a day. When he stood still for too long and wasn't thinking about rubbing his hands together every now and then, they would leave little orange globs of slime where he was standing, such as now in the doorway from the entrance hall (Brian was getting a mop to clean it up now), and he had to wear specifically made clothes that were coated with plastic on the inside. But one got used to it.

Brian still felt sorry for what Gabriel had to endure. He'd been bullied at school for being chubby with glasses himself; although Gabriel didn't like to talk about it much and the teachers tended to try their best to make the parent-teacher meetings as short and sparse as possible, he could only imagine how much staring and snickering he'd face every weekday, not to mention general disgust. It had taken Brian himself years to get fully used to the idea that his son had slimy skin that left puddles in his bed every morning. Out of all eight Pokémorph children, Gabriel was the one that looked the most like, well, a freak. But he had an entirely human personality, which was more than could be said about someone like Mia Kerrigan.

In a way, Brian felt that in the end was the luckiest of them all.

* * *

"Will?"

William McKenzie looked up at his father. Joe McKenzie was a dark-haired, brown-eyed man with glasses and an invariably friendly expression on his face, the kind of man it was impossible not to feel predisposed to like at the sight of him, and knowing him didn't disappoint. Both he and his wife Pamela had always been wonderful parents to Will. And still he couldn't help partially hating them, in as much as he was capable of it, not for what they did but for what they didn't do. And the other part of him hated himself for having that part which hated them, because he had no right to hate them and they hadn't done anything wrong beyond loving all their kids.

"I'm going to shop for a bit. Your mom is still at work, but I've told James to watch you, all right? I won't be long."

"Okay," Will said, although he felt everything but okay at the news. His father smiled, closed the door to his room while pulling on the last sleeve of his jacket, and seconds later the front door slammed.

Without really thinking about it, Will raised his hand to his mouth and began to bite his nails and slowly lick the fingertips in between. His parents had told him to stop it. He didn't really care. It calmed him down. He stroked his fingers across his cheek, feeling the saliva cool his skin, ran them through his brown hair to find the soft, furred back of his triangular ear, and crumpled its floppy shape together with his fingers, scratching it, before releasing it, sliding his hand forward to his forehead as the ear returned to its natural perked shape, and finally returning the hand down to his mouth. He repeated the motion, a little faster this time. There was some intrinsic, satisfying perfection in it. Cleansing. Comfortable. Something reassuring about the way the ear invariably returned to its former shape no matter how he crumpled it. He did it a few more times, first with one hand and then the other. It was almost ritualistic. Trance-like. And, he reminded himself grimly, extremely strange. Freaky. Nobody else did it. People stared at him. So he just did it in his room. It was never as comforting to attempt to achieve the same effect in public, anyway. There would be sounds distracting him, things moving that his eyes would automatically follow, besides of course the uncomfortable stares and his siblings looking at him with disgust. He'd given that up years ago.

Remembering that his siblings were still in the house and could walk in on him, he stopped, stood up, locked his door and sat back down on his bed, licking his fingers briefly again. Then he guiltily dried them on his jeans. He couldn't continue for too long, or the wetness in his hair would give away that he was still doing it.

Will felt very much like a freak, but also a little like an addict. He felt a bit stupid about not having grown out of it, but it was too nice to give it up. There was no harm in it, after all, unlike all the pills and stuff that they taught you to avoid at school. The normal people around him had just decided it was freaky and gross, so they shouldn't have to see it, but there was nothing wrong with doing it, per se.

He wasn't quite sure whether he really felt the same way about the fact that he still loved to play with yarn. He was honestly making an effort to grow out of that. As for the shiny things… well, his parents had more or less gotten him to stop that.

Aw, what the heck. The room was locked.

Will reached under his bed, took out a white ball of yarn that he'd nicked from his grandmother's knitting set a while ago, put it on his floor and spent a few minutes batting it around the room with his hands and catching it. It had no right to be this fun.

He wrapped the yarn back together as well as he could, feeling slightly embarrassed as always, replaced it under his bed, and decided to get something to eat.

Nicky was in the kitchen, eating a bowl of cornflakes while reading 'Sarah Hooter and the Ultimate Fire Stone'. She gave him a dull glare before returning firmly to the book. When he attempted to tell his parents that his siblings hated him, they always spoke of sibling rivalry, of how the two-year-old Nicky and to a lesser extent her brother James had just gotten jealous when he was suddenly brought into the family and received all the attention, and how it was just the same as when James was two and Nicky had been born, and how they didn't really mean anything by it. Of course, what they never really seemed to want to think about was that James and Nicky had, at least as far back as Will could remember, abandoned all of their own rivalry once they'd found a common enemy in him. Their parents had of course told the older siblings to be nice to Will, and that it wasn't his fault he was different, and that he'd soon stop behaving like a cat, and that he was a kid just like them and shouldn't be treated any differently, but that just meant James and Nicky kept their hatred towards him mostly to themselves and to the way they looked at him and to the way they reacted to most everything he did. And somehow, that little part of Will felt like his parents ought to be able to just magically make them stop thinking he was a freak, but of course that didn't make any sense and he had to stop thinking about it.

Will got himself a bowl and a spoon, reached for the cornflakes and milk, and poured himself some. Nicky glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. She was a pretty girl with wavy dark hair and fairly popular at school, but she never invited any of her friends to their house. Will knew exactly why.

He silently ate his cornflakes. Sarah Hooter, strikingly similar to Will's one and only friend, winked at him from the cover of the book as if deliberately to irritate him, remind him that if only he were a fictional character everyone would probably love him.

Then again, not all the morphs had it as bad as he did. Jean herself, despite of course being viewed as a freak by most, was admired and envied at the same time because everyone loved those books and, as she never tired of reminding everyone, she was due to star in the movies when they came out. And somehow she just _did_ it. She was open and confident, and she even had some normal friends. Will had no idea how she'd managed so well. Nobody ever wanted to talk to him.

He ate the last few spoonfuls and sighed. Nicky followed him with her eyes as he dumped his bowl and spoon into the sink. "Where's James?" he asked her.

"Upstairs," his sister replied shortly.

"Didn't Dad tell him to watch out for us?"

Nicky gave him her signature exasperated glare. "You were in your room."

Will shrugged. "Well, I'll go back there, then," he muttered and walked back to his bedroom door. It was better to stay in his room where he wouldn't get in their way.

* * *

Jack looked briefly over the school cafeteria. A number of people glanced up as he entered; he could tell which ones were freshmen just by seeing how freaked out they looked. He smiled to himself, eyed his friends at a table by the window, waved, and pushed himself through the crowd to meet them. He wasn't very hungry.

An unfamiliar face looked up at him from the table and stared. _Ah, so they've taken in a new guy,_ Jack thought. He waved again at the kid – it was a short boy with messy brown hair and large glasses – and sat down.

"Hey, Jack," said Sid, a chubby, dark-haired guy with a severe addiction to MMORPGs. "Where have you been?"

"Sick," Jack replied, glancing at the new guy, who was still staring at them. "Who's that kid?"

The boy flinched, and Jack smiled. "I don't bite."

The kid laughed nervously.

"That's Ben," Vincent explained. "He plays Magic."

"Really? Want a game? I've got a deck with me, if you…"

Jack feigned being stopped short in surprise. Ben was not staring at him anymore, but it was altogether too evident that that was only because he was trying not to.

"Come on. Look at me."

Ben did. The kid had large, brown eyes, or maybe they were just magnified by the glasses.

"Welcome to the tour of me," Jack said. "I'm Jack, I'm blue, and I'm half a Chinchou; glad you noticed. These things," he went on, dangling at the glowing end of one of the antennae that hung down above his face, "are hella useful for reading in the dark, but can be annoying when you're trying to sleep. Don't shake my hand too firmly, since my fingers could crack. They're webbed too, by the way. Get used to this stuff, and you'll be fine. Okay?"

Ben nodded quickly. Jack knew that at this moment the kid was probably seriously considering trying to find another table, but from the sound of it he was enough of a geek to end up with them either way. And experience had taught him they were generally quicker to get used to him than they thought.

It was only to be a couple of weeks before Ben was happily playing Magic with Jack during breaks.


	7. Chapter 7

"…and I'm gonna be in the _movie_!"

Will smiled awkwardly at Jean. "I know. You've told me before."

"Yeah, but they've sent us a _contract_ now! And I'm getting Dad to sign it. He doesn't want me to be in the movie, but I want to."

"Yeah," Will muttered, wondering as he did occasionally whether Jean really was that much better than no company at all. He scratched his whiskers and said nothing more, although he cringed and pulled the hood of his sweatshirt further over his head as the pair of them approached Jean's human friends. He wasn't sure why he did that; after all, it wasn't as if they hadn't seen him before and weren't aware that he was a Pokémorph, and definitely not as if it made them any less likely to ignore him completely (in fact, the opposite was probably true). But he liked to keep his Meowth features concealed anyway. It made him feel less self-conscious.

"You know _what_? They've sent us a _contract_! I'm gonna be in the Sarah Hooter movie!"

Her friends didn't look overly impressed. "We don't _care_, Jean!" moaned a girl with dark, curly hair. "Stop rubbing it in!"

Jean's friends didn't really appear to like her that much, Will had observed. They put up with her and didn't mind talking to her occasionally, but the moment anything reminded them that she wasn't like them, they'd reject her and make it obvious she didn't really belong with human beings. Will wasn't sure whether she ignored it or was just that oblivious.

This time Jean looked at the girls' harsh faces in dumbfounded astonishment and then, abruptly, bared her teeth in a very surprisingly frightening manner and let out an intimidating, uncomfortably bestial snarl.

Will recoiled. Jean's friends jumped and then, after a tense moment, just bolted towards the school building.

Jean's face had returned to normal, her expression confused as if she wasn't entirely sure where the snarl had come from either. She stared after the girls, and Will noted awkwardly that there were tears forming at the corners of her eyes. He backed away a little, not wanting to be the target of a tantrum while also not wanting to look like he was abandoning her as well. He'd never been good with cheering people up.

Jean closed her eyes and shook her head for a second; Will saw the ends of her six red tails curling up a bit more than they already were. Finally she reached for her pocket, grabbed her cellphone from it and opened it, punching in a number with great precision.

Jean's cellphone was really loud. He could hear the slow beeps before her father picked it up even from where he was standing.

_"What is it, sweetheart? I'm driving, so make it quick,"_ said Dave's voice.

"My friends all got mad at me," Jean sniffed. "And then I – I like growled at them."

_"Really?"_ her father answered on the other end. _"Did you do it voluntarily or just sort of impulsively? What kind of growl was it?"_

"I don't know," Jean replied and paused for a second. "They all stared at me and ran away and were all mean."

_"Well, honey, when your fire sac is active, you're going to roast 'em all if they're mean to you, understand?"_

The thought seemed to cheer Jean up considerably. "Yeah!" she shouted happily into the phone while punching the air.

_"But hey, you can tell me all about it when I come to get you home, okay? And when I'm done driving you, I'll have to go back to work. Brian and I have to finish some stuff for Gabriel."_

"But what about the contract?" Jean whined. (Will scolded himself for mentally calling it that, but it really was the most appropriate word.)

Dave let out a long sigh. _"That'll have to wait until I get back tonight, sweetheart. We won't be able to mail it to them until tomorrow, anywa…"_ There was a sudden screech of tires. _"Oh, shit!"_ Then, _"Look, I love you, honey, but can you not call me while I'm driving? I think I nearly ran over a Meowth or something here. Bye, sweetie."_

"Bye," Jean said, but from the sound of it Dave had already hung up. Will was meanwhile shivering at the thought of a Meowth being run over by a car. Especially Dave's car. Even though he'd have loved to be an ordinary human being, he couldn't help identifying slightly with the species he was spliced with. Sometimes he felt stupid about it. At other times he just wondered whether the other morphs felt the same way. It seemed awkward to ask them.

"Okay, so what do you want to do?" Jean asked. The human friends were apparently forgotten. Probably a good thing, since Will couldn't help feeling that if he were them that snarl would have disturbed the hell out of him and there was little hope they would ever think of her the same way again. But Jean always got herself new groups who were semi-willing to hang out with her for a while, for as long as she did not go on about her awaiting acting career too much.

She would get over it before he could say 'That's not friendship'.

"Tag," he said, touching her shoulder before bounding off in a random direction. "You're it."

* * *

Night had fallen by the time Dave and Brian stepped out of the main building of Heywood Labs.

"Jean'll be worried," Dave was saying. "I promised I'd be back home by nine o'clock. I just left her some lasagne, but I don't know if she'll have gotten into bed."

"Well, Gabriel knows how to take care of himself," Brian said as Dave motioned to open the door of his car. "I'd call it a good day's wo …"

He was cut off by a gunshot. It took a while for Dave to register all the blood.

"Shit," he swore while his brain numbly attempted to start itself. His eyes refused to look for the wound, instead fixing themselves on the steadily spreading pool of red around Brian's unmoving body as it lay awkwardly on the sidewalk. "Oh, shit, Brian."

It wasn't until the second gunshot, which chipped some concrete from the wall of the building behind him, that he realized who the gunman had actually meant to shoot.

His brain bolted awake with a sudden rush of adrenaline and before he really realized it, he had ducked behind the car.

"Fuck. Shit. Goddamnit." Where the hell was his cellphone? While his hand dug through his pockets, another bullet hit the windshield of the car, and Dave somehow found the time to evaluate the yelp the sound squeezed out of him as extremely stupid-sounding before he bolted up and started towards the next car, Brian's, parked a few dozen meters away along the same sidewalk. He finally manoeuvred the phone out of his pocket, opened it and attempted to punch in 911, but the actual outcome on the screen looked more like 986121, either because he was still running or because his hands were trembling too much. He didn't really care which.

Dave threw himself onto the sidewalk behind Brian's car just as a third bullet tore through the air behind him and landed on the wall of a side building of the lab.

He pushed himself into a crouching position, hammered the cancel button on his cellphone and retyped the number. He hit the call button as quickly as he could and jerked the phone up to his ear, surprising himself by how broken his voice sounded.

"Emergency? I think some crazed fuck just shot my coworker – yes, still here and still trying to shoot me now, so if you don't mind – just outside Heywood Labs, Grace City – the fuck should I know? – Look, can you just send some cops and an ambulance already…? You did? Right. Okay. Thank you. I'll get back to cowering behind this– _shit!_" Shards of glass suddenly exploded out from the car window just above him as a bullet shattered the pane. Dave tried to cover his head as the rain of broken glass bombarded his back; he felt a couple of pieces pierce the back of his neck before it subsided. He looked quickly at his phone; it was dead. He stuffed it clumsily back into his pocket. The car alarm had gone off with a blaring siren noise.

Dave leapt back to his feet after a moment of thought, racing for the next car which was in front of the next building. "I've called the police!" he screamed on the way, hoping to scare the attacker off even though an increasingly large part of him was sure he had probably given up the wrong information in that phone call or something. "They're on their way!"

He heard another gunshot and felt something strike the side of his forehead, a kind of oddly powerful sting, and warm blood began to leak down the side of his cheek as he attempted to keep running.

_Fuck_, he thought to himself in disbelief as the power left his legs and he crumpled to the ground. _I'm dead. Fucker shot me in the head. I'm dead. Fuck._

While he fell he was hazily surprised at how long it seemed to be taking his brain to shut down, but then his head hit the concrete sidewalk and his vision faded away.

* * *

Dave blinked. This was strange, because people had made up the notion of an afterlife in a bout of wishful thinking and that was not supposed to make it exist.

"You're awake?" said a voice. He blinked again and realized that there was a short man in a white coat standing over him. The side of his head throbbed with dull pain.

"Wow," he muttered as his frontal lobes began to process the situation logically. "I didn't think doctors could cure that."

The man gave him a curt smile. "The bullet only grazed your forehead, Mr. Ambrose. You were very lucky."

"What?" Dave tried to sit angrily up, but the attempt drowned in all the pillows in the hospital bed. "No way in hell that just grazed me. I felt how I died, for fuck's sake."

The doctor gave him another one of those irritating smiles of his, something reminiscent of the way people smiled to a child talking about an imaginary friend. "The psychological shock made you fall, and you were knocked out when you hit your head on the sidewalk. A security guard in one of the nearby buildings came to inspect the noise and stopped the bleeding until the ambulance arrived."

"What?" he asked again, unable to think of anything else to say.

"I assure you you did not die at any point this evening. I'm sorry if this upsets you."

"Stop being a wiseass," Dave said, trying to pull his thoughts back into something coherent. "Where's Brian?"

"I'm afraid there was nothing that could be done for your friend when we got there. The bullet went through his heart. I'm sorry."

Dave blinked yet again a few times. He rubbed his forehead and turned away, trying to convince himself that he just had dust in his eye.

"Well, fuck." Brian. How could Brian be dead? That was goddamned messed up. Brian wasn't supposed to be murdered. That was just not the way things happened. "Fuck," he repeated to fill the silence. It didn't help very much.

There were a few more seconds of awkward silence.

"Well, there is a policeman here who would like to speak with you, but if this is a bad time…"

"No," Dave said, making some vague gesture with his hand without looking at the doctor. Partly it was just to get rid of him, really. "It's fine. Send him in."

He looked back up now that the doctor was walking out of the room and took a few deep breaths. All this was so fucked up. Why couldn't there be a time machine to just rewind everything by… how long had it been, anyway? He looked around and found a clock on the wall above the door. It was a quarter to two AM. He reached carefully up to his head; it had been wrapped in some bandages. The pain still throbbed there vaguely as background noise. There were blue curtains hanging by the sides of his bed, presumably concealing other patients.

A comfortably overweight, uniformed police officer with round glasses stepped into the room, walked over to Dave's bed and sat down on a chair beside it. "Good evening, Mr. Ambrose," the man said. "I just have a couple of questions for the time being. First off, I'm sorry about your friend."

"He wasn't really a friend," Dave mumbled. "Just a coworker."

"Well, sorry about your coworker, then," the policeman corrected himself, flipping briefly through a notebook. "Can you think of anyone who would have a motive to want him dead?"

Dave snorted. "Brian? Fuck, no. He's the least offensive person you've ever met."

The policeman raised his eyebrows and scribbled something into his notebook, but said nothing. "So you have no idea who might have been behind this?"

"Truth to be told, I think the guy was just trying to shoot me and got him instead."

The cop wrote some more. "So you think they had a motive to attack you?" he asked without looking up.

"Oh, sure," Dave replied. "There are all sorts of nuts I've upset in some way or another." And as he said it, he came to the unsettling realization that seeing as whoever it was had clearly not been caught, the psycho was still after him. "He'll try to kill me again," he muttered aloud. "Fuck."

The policeman nodded, pencil still furiously scratching the notebook. "It's possible. I'd be careful if I were you. You should try to stay in your apartment for a while once you get out of here, at least until the guy is caught or we find out more. We'll get a couple of guys to hang around nearby just in case he tries to get you at home."

"Thanks," Dave mumbled, not quite sure what he was thanking the man for as he hadn't really been listening.

"Did you see the attacker?"

"Not a hair."

The cop finished writing, looked up at him and smiled. "Well, that will be all for now. We'll contact you later as the investigation continues."

"All right."

The policeman left. Dave was starting to get a severe headache and wanted to sleep, but the irritating doctor stepped in again. "You also have some visitors. Should I show them in?"

"Sure," he replied, waving the doctor off. He wasn't even sure who the visitors were and wasn't at all sure he would like to meet them, but he said it anyway. As it turned out, the visitors were Howard and Mia, which partly cheered him up and partly didn't; after all, it could have been somebody like his mother (or worse, Jane), but at the same time he was dully disappointed that they were the only people who cared enough to visit him.

Howard hurried over to the bed and attempted to give him a hug, not succeeding very well as he was standing by the side of the bed.

"Brian… oh, God, I can't believe it. I'm glad you got out okay. I'm not sure what the morphs would do without you. But… God…"

Howard actually did have tears in his eyes, which made Dave feel awkward. He looked over at Mia, who stood by the other side of the bed and looked at him with an empty expression. There was no better person to trust not to be sentimental.

"Cheryl stayed home to watch out for Lucy. Joe is on the way and he was going to pick Jean up. Everybody over in Taillow Springs has been contacted. They're all in shock about this. I think your mother…"

"Christ, don't bring her here," Dave muttered, rubbing his head. The headache was getting worse.

"Well," Howard continued after a second's pause, "what I'm saying is everybody is kind of scared now. I mean, there's somebody targeting us, obviously, and from what I heard the killer ran for it the moment the security guard announced he had a gun and he didn't see anything. I think the cops found some bullets, though, and are working on trying to trace down the owner of the gun they came from… oh, God, Dave, he killed Brian. He killed Brian."

"I kind of noticed," Dave mumbled and wished Howard would at least attempt to hide the fact he was crying. "I think he's after me more than you guys. I mean, I'm the main guy behind the Pokémorphs and all."

"You think it has to do with them?" Howard sighed and started trying to wipe his face with his sleeve. "I guess it makes sense, I suppose, but…"

"What else? Most fucking controversial thing we've ever done. Didn't you get some fundamentalist nut waving a sign in front of your house the other day?"

"You think it was him?"

"Probably not. He seemed more the sort to just wait for God to strike me with lightning." Dave rubbed his forehead again, wishing he could go to sleep. "I see you brought Mia," he said to change the subject.

"She wanted to come."

Dave turned to the girl, who was still standing in the same spot beside the bed as before, unmoved. "Well, that was nice of you."

Mia just looked at him in silence, her eyes flicking between the bandages on his head and his neck.

"It just grazed you," she observed.

"Apparently. Didn't feel that way."

"They took us to the morgue," she went on. "Brian was there. There was a lot of blood. It smelled nice. I think I wanted to eat him."

Howard gave her a very disturbed look which Dave took to mean she had not mentioned this to him.

"Well, you're not going to eat him, Mia," he said, trying to sound as conversational as he could while pushing the image of the half-Scyther tearing Brian's throat out with her teeth firmly out of his head.

"I know. But I don't want to eat you because you've got bandages on."

"That's nice."

"Mia, you should probably wait outside," Howard said, his voice brokenly high-pitched and pathetic. The girl obeyed, walking casually back out the door.

"Why the fuck did you take Mia to a morgue of all places?"

"We were the first people to arrive and they wanted us to identify him before the autopsy," Howard said miserably. "I didn't really think before bringing her along."

Howard sighed and looked down. "God," he muttered suddenly. "Who's going to tell Gabriel?"

Dave groaned. "Gabriel. Right." He rubbed his eyes, trying to think. "I'll do it. I was there. You got a phone?"

Howard fished a cellphone out of his pocket and handed it silently to Dave. He found Brian's name in the contact list and pressed the green button, holding the phone to his ear.

He waited for a while, the calm beeps of the phone searing through his ear and magnifying his headache. He was about to hang up when a sleepy voice answered, _"Hello?"_

"Hey, Gabriel."

_"Dave? What… why are you calling in the middle of the night?"_ Gabriel sounded only sleepy and irritated and had clearly not noticed that Brian hadn't come home yet. That made it worse.

"Your father, he, uh…"

_"He what?"_

"He died." Dave paused and then decided that was too short and abrupt. "Some psycho shot him when we were coming out of the lab. I think he was trying to shoot me, but I moved and he was behind me, and… he died." Then he realized that was absolutely not the right way to approach this and tried again. "I mean, there was that gunman, and he shot him, and then he tried to get me too but I called an ambulance and then the bullet just grazed me. I'm in the hospital right now. They didn't catch the guy."

That didn't really sound good enough either, as evidenced by the complete lack of a response on the other end of the phone.

"Gabriel?" Dave asked carefully. There was a short silence and then the sound of hanging up.

Dave rubbed his forehead again. Goddamned headache. "Fuck."

Howard made no comment, staring at the curtain on the other side of the bed. "What did he say?" he asked at length.

"Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing."

"I should call one of the others in Taillow Springs and get them to go over to him. See if he's okay."

Dave gave him back the phone without words. Howard began to dial a number.

"Any word from Jane?" Dave asked him suddenly. Howard looked up.

"What? No. Why would there be? It's been ten years since you were involved."

Dave shrugged. "Just wondering."

He lay back in his bed and heard vaguely as Howard talked to Bill Ray and asked him to check on Gabriel. He didn't really notice it happening, but by the time Howard hung up, he was fast asleep, dreaming of Mia eating Brian and bullets shattering windshields.


	8. Chapter 8

Peter didn't notice anything odd when he woke up. Aside from the singing of the bird Pokémon outside, everything was silent. He ran his eyes up towards the wooden ceiling and then to the bright daylight flooding in through the window; he had forgotten to draw the thick green curtains last night.

He sat up stiffly, yawning as he scratched the small, deformed wings on his back, and reached for the large blue T-shirt at the foot of his bed. He pulled it on absent-mindedly while his eyes searched the room for other hastily discarded articles of clothing; he didn't need to look for his blue-and-yellow baseball cap, which was always lying on the stool by the side of his bed where he could reach for it without even thinking about it. He pulled it on, turned it backwards and adjusted it before he stood up, walked to a pair of jeans lying beside his wardrobe in the corner of the room, and put them on as well.

He was beginning to notice in the back of his mind that things were a little more quiet than they were supposed to be.

"Kathy?" he called and got no answer. He opened his bedroom door and looked at the identical wooden door straight across; it was open and he could tell without really checking that his sister wasn't there.

He turned towards the staircase on the left and began to walk carefully down. "Kathy, are you there?"

"Pete?"

Her voice was squeaky and quiet, and he could tell she was in tears even before he came down the stairs and found her sitting at the kitchen table with her face buried in the petals of her roselike hands. He had that strange feeling of being out of place, like the world had been turned upside-down when he slept and he was the only one still this way up.

"Sis, what's wrong?"

She looked up at him, her arms flopping uselessly down at her sides. "They killed Brian," she whispered. "And Dave was nearly killed, too."

He stared. He wasn't used to seeing his big sister like that. "What?"

"Some man tried to kill them both," she said helplessly, and he walked over to her in a bit of a trance to let her hug him, just to confirm she was still physically there.

"Where are Mom and Dad?"

"They went to visit Dave at the hospital. They told me to tell you."

"So is Brian…"

"He's gone," she sniffed. "The… the murderer shot him through the heart."

As she said it, she didn't sound like she really believed it. Peter felt increasingly like the world around him was some sort of an alien place, not the one in which he had gone to sleep last night. The thought that it was a dream crossed his mind, but more because that was how he knew people were supposed to feel in situations like this than because he actually believed it could be. He felt like he ought to cry, but he didn't really feel sad. It was too surreal to be sad.

"It's… it's okay, Kathy," he said numbly. His sister sobbed into his shoulder and he wondered if the Taillow part of him had made him emotionally disturbed to some degree, unable to mourn. Then he thought of Gabriel, and somehow, maybe because they went to the same school and had played a lot together when they were a bit younger or just because they were both Pokémorphs, that was when he felt a little sting in his heart, the world melted abruptly back into the real world and he found himself hugging Katherine back and letting his own tears stain her shoulder.

"Is Sarah still asleep?" he murmured.

"Yeah."

He glanced at the third bedroom door between the stairs and the cheery, bright red wooden letters spelling out his technically older sister's name. There was not a sound to be heard from the room. It was not surprising; he had always woken up earlier than Sarah when they were left to their own devices. But to know that she was asleep, that she didn't even know, made the world begin to feel alien again, and he turned around and buried his face in Katherine's shoulder and wished everything could just be normal again.

* * *

"Daddy, Daddy!"

Dave groaned. He had no sooner woken up than his headache returned. He blinked a few times and forced himself to sit up. "What is it, honey?"

Jean nearly jumped into the hospital bed, stopped more by the height of it than by any respect towards the sick. "I've got the contract, Daddy! They sent it!"

Dave stared at her in dazed disbelief. "What?"

"The acting contract! For Sarah Hooter!"

He wasn't quite sure how to even begin to reply. "I was nearly shot to death last night. The contract isn't really a… top priority right now."

She showed him her cute puppy eyes, and he pretended she was really sad about him. Or Brian. Not the contract.

"But Daddy…"

Not the fucking contract.

She clamped onto his arm, closed her eyes and started sobbing. "But Mr. McKenzie said you were asleep, and he said it was okay, and then he talked to the doctors and they said you can come home today and now he said I could wake you up."

There. Now he felt a bit more like a father. "I'm fine, sweetie," he said and hugged her back as well as his current position allowed him. He wondered briefly whether Joe had told her about Brian or not but didn't have the heart to ask.

"So are you going to sign it now?" she asked brightly, looking expectantly back up at him and putting a few sheets of paper on the bed along with a pen.

He didn't really want to do it, but she was too cute and he had too much of a headache to argue. Afterwards, she went bouncing off into the hall to show it off, and he rubbed his forehead and sighed. It was first now that he noticed that the television in the room was on; he wouldn't have thought much of that either if he hadn't caught a glimpse of a pretty, redheaded news reporter in quite a lovely scarlet dress.

_"…of the famous Heywood Labs perished and another was hurt when an unknown attacker with a firearm ambushed them last night. The research institute was the center of controversy a decade ago when its employees were the first to successfully splice the genomes of humans and Pokémon, resulting in eight living so-called Pokémorphs. Police have been unable to locate the attacker as of yet but have stated that the shootings are likely to be connected to the Pokémorph incident."_

"Bitch," Dave muttered to himself. "Won't even say my name."

They moved on to sports and then to silly news about Meowth kittens and the whole while she was sitting happily beside that smug anchorman she was screwing (or had been a few months ago, at least, not that she hadn't probably given everyone at the studio several blowjobs to get where she was now) as if she had no more than a passing knowledge of Heywood Labs and the Pokémorphs. Most of the people watching it, he realized with irritation, had no idea she had had a nervous breakdown and tried to throw a baby out of a window and just thought of her as one of those successful career women. And she was making more money than he was, damn it.

_"…but not as cute as you, though."_

_"Haha, good one, Jane."_

It was a good thing he was not holding the remote, because he might have thrown it at the TV and then he would have had to pay for it.

* * *

Gabriel stared at the back of whoever was in front of him.

He could see the blurry blob he knew was Dave in his peripheral vision, walking up to the altar – he could just picture the man scowling at the fact they were in a church, which had been at his grandmother's insistence – but wanted anything but to look at him. Him, who had been there when his father had died.

"Brian was a nice guy. He was always a nice guy. It was difficult not to like him."

Him, who was lying through his teeth, because Gabriel had noticed – who hadn't, really? – the way that Dave liked to blame Brian for his own mistakes just because he was so easy to pin things on, just because he never fought back. Just because he was too nice to stand up for himself.

"He always tried to do what was best for his son and his effort to try to make things as easy and comfortable for Gabriel as possible was truly admirable."

Him, who had helped, but left most of the work to Brian; him, who had raised his daughter as a spoiled brat and still dared to comment on the parenting skills of others.

"His creative input when we were creating the Pokémorphs was also something amazing."

Him, who had always taken the full credit for their creation unless that was inconvenient and would continue to do so after the funeral.

"And, well, without him, they wouldn't even exist today."

By which he meant screwing up the television debate that he had forced Brian to go to and had blamed him for for years.

"He even took on the most challenging morph to raise, which is quite something, and handled it admirably, resulting in, well, our Gabriel."

Meaning him, the Slugma boy that no one had wanted but he had forced on Brian as punishment for the debate and Brian had learned to love only later.

"He was a truly great man and will be sorely missed among his coworkers."

Because you must say that at a funeral, even if you won't miss him, or at most miss the fact he would deal with the burden of his disgusting, slimy freak son and thus you would not have to.

"When he was taken from us so suddenly…"

And how dare he, how dare the man who the murderer had been going for stand there and say that about the one who took the bullet for him?

Gabriel felt sick.

He stood quietly up and began to walk out at the side, knowing that everyone was looking at him, even being aware of Dave's gaze on his back while he tried to continue that horrible speech. Gabriel was glad to find a side door, threw up into the grass by the church wall and then sat down on the other side and shook, staring at the graveyard and the open grave that waited, ready to swallow what was left of his father and mark it with a meaningless cross as a symbol for a nonexistent god. He could still hear the faint echo of Dave's words through the door.

He would never forgive him, ever. How could he forgive the one who should have died instead of his father? At least Dave was a jerk. Gabriel didn't like to say anyone deserved to die, but no one could deny that there would have been some semblance of karma in it. His father had never done anything wrong.

It wasn't fair.

He wasn't sure how long he sat there. When they carried the coffin out, many people gave him a glance from afar and he considered joining the procession, but he figured he would just ruin the ceremony for everybody there who wasn't used to seeing him (he had noticed several aunts and uncles he had only seen once or twice who seemed a little horrified by the sight of him) and the thought of watching the coffin sink into the ground while knowing what it contained was a bit sickening.

His father. He'd been a living, breathing, thinking human being only a few days ago. They'd ordered pizza last Friday and watched a cheesy romantic comedy. He had been in the middle of reading an acclaimed mystery novel and would never know who did it.

Pathetic as it was, that was the thought that made him finally curl up, bury his head between his knees and cry.

He was too far away to distinguish words, but he could make out the faint drawl of the priest's voice from the churchyard. There was something soothing about it being so far away, the silence otherwise only broken by the occasional noise of the radio from the stationary police car that had been assigned to watch the funeral to deter or capture the criminal if he showed up to finish the job and the chirping of a flock of Pidgey near the other side of the church. It was just outside Taillow Springs, where the sound of cars from the town could not really be heard anymore. The Harrisons didn't live too far away; they had a Pokémon breeding ranch a short drive from town.

"Hey, Gabriel," said a voice, and Gabriel looked up to see Jack's blue face and the accompanying antennae bobbing up and down in front of it. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," he replied dully, took off one of his black gloves and rubbed some life into his face. Down by the grave, he could see the coffin being lowered in, cringed and looked away.

"Here," said Jack and held forward an ordinary red and white Pokéball. "From all of us."

Gabriel stared at it for a second, took it in his gloved hand and then dropped it on the ground. A jagged shape of white light burst out of the ball and formed into a cute young Growlithe puppy. It tilted its head before attempting to lick his face; it cringed at the taste, let out a quiet whine and then lay down by his side.

He looked up at Jack.

"It's one of Talia's pups, you know, the Harrisons' Arcanine," the Chinchou boy explained. "They said she was the most playful and good-tempered of the bunch. Her name's Felicia. We just thought… even while you're living with us, it would be nice for you to have somebody who'll always love you and be there for you." He smiled awkwardly. "Something like that. It was Dave's idea, actually."

Gabriel had a sudden urge to throw the Pokéball in Jack's face as hard as he could and tell him to leave him alone, but Jack hadn't done anything wrong and the puppy really was kind of cute. He just gave the other boy a weak smile and scratched the Growlithe's ear.

"Well, I hope you like her," Jack said at last. "We were planning it yesterday, so we got food for her and such. It will be ready when we get home. Are you coming over to the…" He trailed off, his tone questioning. Gabriel shook his head, still scratching the puppy's thick fur, and Jack turned around and walked back to the group.

Gabriel looked at the dog Pokémon by his side, half of him already attached to the creature and half feeling hurt at the suggestion that a Pokémon could even begin to act as a replacement for his father.

She looked up at him with adorable dark brown eyes and he figured she didn't really need to be a replacement for anything.

"Felicia," he muttered. "Good girl."

"Growl," she responded and tilted her head towards him. He smiled but hated himself for being able to smile now, now when he just wanted to mourn and punch a pillow and cry, and after a moment of thought he recalled her back into the ball, stared at the police car and just waited.

Brian would never find out who did it.

Gabriel felt his eyes begin to water again, and he silently resolved to himself that he would read that book and find out for him.


	9. Chapter 9

The geneticist who had lost his daughter at the beginning of the book was the murderer, and at the end he shot himself.

Gabriel sniffed as he closed the book. He remembered his father describing what it was about and how he felt for that character when he had only just started reading; once Gabriel had started, he'd quickly also concluded that the geneticist was the most sympathetic character in the whole book. And then… Gabriel felt tears welling up in his eyes again and blinked them resentfully away. Why did he have to be such a wreck over this, of all things? A stupid book. Pathetic.

He looked dully at Felicia, sleeping on the other end of the couch, and reached over to pet her. He half-wanted to vent about it aloud, but didn't really trust his voice for the moment, so he kept his mouth shut.

Jack came out of the kitchen, holding a platter with two slices of toast with marmalade, and turned towards Gabriel. The luminous ends of his antennae swished back and forth; Gabriel didn't think it would ever stop being slightly comical. He smiled dryly as Jack made his way towards him, laid the platter down on the glass table and then threw himself down beside Felicia, scratching her ear slightly. "Want some?" he asked, indicating the bread. Gabriel shook his head.

Jack shrugged and took a large bite out of one slice for himself, eying the book that still lay shut in Gabriel's hands. "Finished it?" he asked through the bread. Gabriel just nodded.

"How was it?"

"Good," Gabriel replied emptily. "Really good."

Jack looked at him out of the corner of his eye as he stuffed more bread into his mouth. "You've got…" he said, crumbs flying out over the table as he pointed to his hair. Gabriel extinguished the growing flame blindly with his hand, only remembering that he was still wearing his gloves after he began to smell singed leather.

"Crap."

"Don't worry about it," Jack said quickly. "You can't really see it."

Gabriel looked dully at the black glove; while he couldn't really tell where it had started to burn, that didn't change that it was now smeared with his skin on the outside, quite undermining the purpose of wearing the gloves to begin with. He sighed, pulled them off and laid them down on the table with the dirty one on top of the clean one.

"So, uh…" Jack's gaze shifted between Gabriel and the gloves on the table. "Magic?"

Gabriel looked at him, not really in the mood. "I'm no good at that game."

"You can always learn more, right?" Jack looked at him hopefully. "Or, hey, we can watch Pokérus. I borrowed season four from Ben the other day." He paused. "It's not something you used to watch with your dad, is it?"

Gabriel shook his head. He had never been very fond of that show (even he could tell that the biology was markedly off in some episodes), but at least it was an excuse to spend a few hours killing time without actually doing anything. "Sure."

Jack sprang up from the couch. "I'll put them in the laundry basket," he said, picking up the gloves. "Be right back."

Gabriel was left alone with Felicia, unable to stroke her without getting the stupid slime all over her fur. He sighed and looked longingly at the slice of toast remaining on the platter; on second thought he was kind of hungry and would have liked to be able to belatedly take Jack's offer and eat it. But without his gloves, the idea of eating something while holding it in his hands was less than appetizing.

He sighed, stood up and went to the kitchen look for a knife and fork. He heard Jack returning, the footsteps suddenly stopping, and then the inevitable, "Gabriel, where'd you go?"

"Kitchen," he called back, picking the cutleries carefully up before closing the drawer with his elbow and walking back out to the living room. "Do you mind if I eat the other piece of toast?"

"Oh," Jack replied, sounding somewhat taken aback. "Sure." He inserted the DVD into the player and then sat down at the other end of the couch, leaving the seat by the platter for Gabriel. As he sank into the red leather of the couch, Felicia looked up with an expression that begged for petting, but he could only shake his head and focus on his bread, which he finished within a few bites. He still felt hungry, but somehow unmotivated to try to get himself more food. He had barely noticed the beginning of the episode on the screen, but they were all kind of the same anyway.

He laid down the knife and fork, sat back and sighed. Jack gave him a brief, anxious glance.

"You don't need to try so hard, you know," Gabriel muttered.

"Huh?"

"Keeping me occupied."

"Oh, it's…" Jack began immediately, but trailed off and stared at the TV for a second; the fake nothing-is-wrong expression faded from his face. "Well, I just… I kinda worry about you, you know? I figured you needed something to keep your mind off things."

Gabriel smiled wearily. "Thanks, but you do that better by just being you."

Jack looked at him and then back at the screen, contemplating it; then he turned suddenly back to Gabriel and asked, "Do you mind if I ask my friends over to play DnD?"

As it turned out, this was the first evening since the incident that Gabriel could really enjoy himself; it was very relaxing to spend it as the wizard Gringalot on a quest to defeat Giratina as part of an unlikely team of travellers with an oddly modern sense of humour.

* * *

Peter took a shower that morning. It was always a bit of a tedious affair for him to take a shower, since his wings, with their rather messed-up feathers, liked to collect a lot of dirt, and it was always a bit difficult to reach around to clean them.

When he was created, his parents had explained, a large part of the challenge was to see if they could modify a human to have six limbs, and because of this he had been one of the key morphs of the experiment – he liked to think he'd been the very most important one. To achieve this, they had introduced a gene recurring with minor differences in various six-limbed Pokémon species, such as Machamp and Charizard, that when disabled in them would prevent the growth of the third set of limbs. Naturally, he had also had the Taillow genes coding for wing structure, and they had made sure that they would be active in the right set of limbs. But they had missed something in the complex interactions of all those genes, because while the bone structure had accommodated the third pair of limbs reasonably, the wings themselves had ended up tiny and shrivelled and he had never been able to move them at all.

In other words, he was a failed experiment.

His parents had told him not to let that fact upset him; he wasn't sure why it ought to and just found it kind of cool. They had also offered to let him have his wings surgically removed, but even if they were hard to clean, they were still cool, and they didn't really get in his way since they were so small.

So Peter liked his wings, even if they were tiny and useless. When he was wearing a reasonably big T-shirt, people couldn't even tell they were there, and while he was wearing his baseball cap, they couldn't tell that he had feathers instead of hair on his head, either. He thought that was why he'd never had it as bad as some of the others – people could forget he was weird. He thought that was nice, too. Not that they couldn't figure it out when he moved weirdly when he wasn't concentrating, or in the showers in gym class, but they weren't thinking about it all the time, like they were with Kathy or Gabriel. And that was why Peter had normal friends and they didn't really. He was lucky. His sister was nice and deserved to have friends, but her rose-hands freaked people out, and whenever she started getting to know someone she grew up much faster than them.

He turned off the shower, stepped out of it and dried himself. A stripe of golden sunlight stretched across the floor from between the curtains, a hint that autumn hadn't quite set into the weather yet. He quickly pulled on his clothes and opened the curtains, looking out at the countryside landscape of fields and trees; it only took a few notes of birdsong to draw him down the stairs and out the front door.

Peter had never liked being confined to closed rooms, after all.

He ran out to the Ponyta herd grazing in the north field, feeling energized just to know of all the wide space around him; he laughed when the startled Pokémon closest to him turned around, their manes flaring, and galloped to the other side of the field. "Lily!" he shouted. "Come over here!"

His Rapidash, who had been his starter Pokémon at the beginning of his journey that summer, looked up, her ears perked up, before trotting over to him. She was still the most powerful and his favourite of his Pokémon, even though his parents had told him he shouldn't really have favourites because he ought to love them all equally for who they were. He had known her since her birth, after all, knowing she would be his starter Pokémon; the ones he had caught in the wild during the summer just weren't the same.

Lily let him pet her for a moment, but then abruptly snatched the cap from his head and took off in a light run along the fence, neighing mischievously towards him. He broke into a sprint after her, laughing; he loved little more than running after her when she was teasing him, and she knew that well.

The wind rushed past his ears, comfortably cool but somehow numbing, and he felt the dew-coated grass blades stroke his ankles in an odd, blurry sort of sensation; something felt different, though he couldn't put his finger on it. He was closing in on Lily and saw her turn her head slightly to see him before speeding up. And that was when it struck him that he was really, _really_ fast. The realization made him laugh in exhilaration as he looked around and saw the trees whirring past – he hadn't even been this fast in a car! – and turning at the corner of the fence seemed strangely easy and automatic. He felt himself gaining speed without really realizing how he did it, the Rapidash struggling to keep ahead of him, and then he miraculously caught up to her side; he flung himself into her without really knowing why, and the sheer momentum sent both of them tumbling into the grass. It was lucky it was soft.

He was still letting out short bursts of laughter when he stood up, intoxicated by the sheer amazement of what he had just achieved; his heart pounded in his chest and he was breathing in rapid gulps of air. He would end up with some bruises from this, he was sure, and his clothes were soaking wet from the landing in the grass. Lily was pushing herself to her feet; she shook her head, tiny droplets of water flying in every direction as her mane flared up indignantly. Peter picked his cap up from the grass beside them; it was too wet to put on.

The Pokémon looked at him with a questioning gaze.

"Lily," he said after a moment, "I'm not sure, but I think I just used a Quick Attack."

He grinned at her, and she tilted her head towards him with an unimpressed snort. He made sure she wasn't seriously injured after the roll, gave her a pat on the neck and then walked back towards the house to tell someone.

* * *

Cheryl waved to the police officer in the car parked a short distance away as she crossed the street. He raised a hand back at her, which told her he had gotten the message that she would be coming. That was good, she thought; she'd have hated to have to deal with convincing a policeman that she was not there to murder David Ambrose.

The only reason she'd come at all, really, was how horribly broken he had sounded on the phone begging for company. They couldn't leave Mia and Lucy home alone at night – not at a time like this – so Howard was left with the girls, and she had gone alone. Now that she was actually stepping into the apartment building, she was having second thoughts; the drive there had felt a lot more unsettling than it sounded in theory, and despite good intentions, the presence of the lone police car outside did little to make her feel safer from lurking murderers.

But Dave was a friend, and Cheryl couldn't turn her back on a friend, even if he was in all likelihood drinking and nighttime travel a bit dangerous.

The staircases were unlit and empty, the windows giving clear view out to the streets; the bright light from the streetlamps outside cast harsh shadows on the stairs. She could not help finding the large windows a little unnerving: too easy to see and shoot someone through, she thought as she hurried up the last flight of stairs. She knocked on the door of Dave's apartment, throwing another glance at the window and the empty street outside as she did.

"It's not locked," she heard a muffled voice call from inside. Cheryl turned the doorknob and pushed the door open.

"Oh, God, Dave," she muttered as she closed it hesitantly. Of course she knew Dave too well to have expected him to be sober, but the sheer number of empty cans and bottles standing on and around the table that Dave was sitting at still startled her; again she was struck with the feeling she shouldn't have come. But pity quickly took over: she couldn't just leave him like this.

Dave looked up. "Sorry I'm such a mess," he said, his voice slightly slurred and full of self-contempt. "Thanks for coming."

He pushed the chair opposite him away from the table with his foot; Cheryl walked slowly over to it and sat down. She wasn't sure what to say; he looked at her, and she looked at him, wondering just when he'd last shaved, just how much he'd been drinking recently, just how little he'd slept in the past week. Again she felt sorry for him.

"I can't fucking live like this," he said at last. "Locking myself in to hide from some crazy fuck, not going anywhere without police watching over my shoulder. I'm going to go insane before they catch him, damn it."

Cheryl looked away and nodded absent-mindedly. Dave, having been concluded to have been the primary intended target of the attack that had killed Brian, had the most extreme protective measures around him, but they all knew the feeling to some extent. The sudden lack of freedom was bad enough; the paranoia that automatically enforced it was even worse.

"Are you alone?" she asked quietly. "Where's Jean?"

"Been staying with the McKenzies for a couple of days," Dave answered. "Can't fucking blame her, can I?"

A few seconds of silence. Then, "She's going to be in that goddamn Sarah Hooter movie. Why did I sign the fucking thing?"

Cheryl shook her head. "It's her choice, Dave," she said. "They're not the best books around, I know, but in the end it's her life and her own decis…"

"Her decision, my ass," Dave interjected with an angry motion of his hand that knocked a few empty cans off the table. "There'll be thousands of fucking furries and pedos jacking off to her picture every night; how could she ever make an informed decision about that? More publicity's the absolute worst fucking thing that could be done to her, and I signed a fucking contract to make her a kid star. Jesus Christ."

Cheryl wished she had something reassuring to say to this, but she couldn't really think of anything. Dave rested his head on his hands, fingers buried in his hair. "Fuck," he muttered.

She looked at him in silence.

Dave looked up after a few seconds, took a sip from the bottle in his hand and said suddenly, "I haven't gotten laid in fucking ages."

Cheryl took a deep breath. "Dave," she said gently, "you're drunk."

"I still like you, you know," he went on, pleading entering into his voice as he ignored her reply.

"Yes," she said shortly and wondered fleetingly if he honestly thought she hadn't noticed. "I know."

"Howard would never have to find ou…"

"Dave," she interrupted, jerking her head back towards him, "that's over. There's a reason I married him instead of running off with you back then."

Dave looked at her for a moment and then rested his his head on his arms again, looking down. "Right," he muttered. "Yes, I'm drunk. Sorry. I didn't mean it. It's just… I fucking hate this."

Cheryl took another deep breath. "I should probably leave," she said.

"Yes," Dave replied, shaking his head. "I'm sorry. Christ, I'm going to snap if they don't find the fucker soon."

She couldn't help still pitying him as she walked out the door, plagued with guilty memories.

* * *

A/N: The plot of Gabriel's book is that of an Icelandic mystery novel (_Tainted Blood_ or _Jar City_ in the English translation), although the order of events described here is as they unfold in the film of the book. Mostly just a reference put in for my own amusement, but I'd rather give credit where it's due before people start to tell me "You should really write that book!"


	10. Chapter 10

_"David Ambrose?"_

"Yes?"

_"We got him."_

* * *

Dave hesitated before pulling the key from the ignition. Without ever taking his hand off it – that would make it too deliberate – he took a deep breath and leaned back against the car seat. He exhaled, slowly, controlledly. He felt the built-up tension of the past couple of weeks relaxing its grip on his body; muscles he didn't know he had unclenched one by one.

It was over.

He allowed himself to close his eyes and savor another gulp of air, finally mostly devoid of that smothering paranoia. Part of Dave's mind of course imagined a crazy-looking man in a prison uniform bursting out of the door in front of him, pulling a gun out of nowhere and pointing it at the windshield with a wicked grin – but at least now the possibility was remote enough to safely ignore.

"Christ," he muttered, took one last moment to sit there and enjoy the relief, and then pulled the key out. He opened the door, climbed out of the car, slammed it back shut. No murderers. Nothing to fear. Not anymore.

The moment he stepped through the door of the police station, two officers that had been talking near a desk across the room turned their heads towards him and one of them stood up. The policeman hastened towards him and grabbed his hand in an almost painful handshake. "Mr. Ambrose," he said, a fast but firm voice. "I'm Officer Russell. Thank you for coming. How much did they tell you on the phone?"

"That you got the psycho that nearly shot me."

"We did, we did," replied the policeman while nodding overenthusiastically. "Or I suppose you could say he got himself. A man came by the station yesterday, Jacob Daniels – do you know him?"

"Can't say it rings any bells."

"Well, he knows you. Brother of the priest of the Church of Holy Truth – it's a fundamentalist sect, don't know if you've heard of it. They've been quite outspoken about the, ah… Pokémorph issue."

The man winced when he mentioned it, a gesture that, in Dave's experience, was mostly common to those who had been horrified and disgusted when they had first heard about the morphs and merely tried their best to forget where they came from now that they were lovable little kids. "Fundies," he responded, channelling his brief annoyance into a more productive path. "Figures."

"Well, anyway, he said he wanted to confess to the murder of Brian Edwards. Recited all sorts of details only the killer could know, even brought the weapon with him to let us match the rifling marks. Registered to him, bought a few years ago for home protection. Seemed pretty proud of it, but even if he recants the confession, we have more than enough evidence to make a quick, straightforward case. It's pretty solid."

Dave looked blankly at the other man. "So wait, the guy chooses to turn himself in now, after we've been hiding from the bogeyman for weeks?"

Officer Russell shrugged. "He said God told him to do it, and now to confess his crime."

"Well, that's... annoying." Annoying. It wasn't even just annoying. It was fucking criminal. If he was going to turn himself in in the first place, why couldn't the fucker have done it immediately afterwards and saved everyone the trouble?

"Anyway," the policeman went on, "just to put a lid on it, we wanted to do a Gardevoir test as well, so that's why we called you. It'll only take a minute."

"Right."

"Follow me, then."

The officer led him down a corridor to the right. "Are you familiar with how the test works?"

"Vaguely."

"Just look him in the eye, ask him whether he did it and whether anybody knew about his intentions or was working with him, and the creature handles the rest."

They went through a reinforced metal door into a bleak interrogation room. At the table in the middle sat a tall, dark-haired man with striking, handsome features and an element of relaxed confidence in his posture even despite having his hands cuffed behind his back. Two guards stood behind him, while another officer stood at the side of the table beside the graceful Psychic Pokémon that was watching the prisoner steadily with unblinking red eyes. Jacob Daniels was looking musingly back at the Pokémon, but turned his piercing blue eyes towards Dave as they walked in. A grin spread through his face.

"Amelia is picking up malice, possibly murderous intent, sir," said the policeman with the Gardevoir, which was still staring fixedly at the prisoner. Jacob Daniels appeared completely unfazed by the declaration and simply continued to flash that creepy toothpasty grin.

Dave regarded the man in silence for a second. The knowledge that he was standing in front of someone who had attempted to murder him struck him uncomfortably. He cleared his throat.

"So you're the creep who tried to kill me."

Jacob smiled at him, arrogance beaming from his face. "I was an instrument of the Lord. Your fate has been decided. I was merely chosen to do the dirty work."

"Some mighty fine instrument, aren't you, killing the wrong guy?"

"Please stick to questioning about the matter at hand, Mr. Ambrose," said Officer Russell. Jacob Daniels laughed softly.

"There are no coincidences, Mr. Ambrose. God's ways are many and mysterious. We cannot make the mistake of doubting them when our interpretations are faulty."

"What the fuck is that supposed to even mean?" Dave waited a second for a possible answer; Jacob did not so much as change his expression. "Were you working alone?"

"I answer to no one but the Lord."

"Did anybody else know about your little plot?"

The man looked into his eyes and folded his arms. "Why would I tell someone who might have interfered before the cause could be carried out? No. I am not an idiot, Mr. Ambrose."

"And that's why you're in jail right now and I'm still alive."

Jacob Daniels flashed him a grin, unfazed. There was something deeply disturbing about his complete lack of anger at his failure. Dave looked at the guard with the Gardevoir.

"She feels no indication that he is lying or concealing any facts, sir."

Officer Russell shrugged and stepped back from the wall he had been leaning against. "That will be all for now, then. Let me show you out."

Dave took one last look at his would-be murderer and his unsettling grin before following the officer out of the room and back into the cold corridor. It took a moment for the discomfort of Jacob Daniels' presence to wear off.

"Why'd you need me to ask him that stuff, anyway?"

"It gives a better emotional reading," the policeman explained. "We questioned him too, of course, but it's easier for Gardevoir to sense them fully when an outside stimulus is forcing the emotions associated with the relevant memories more to the forefront of the mind."

"Right," Dave replied, trying to keep most of the scepticism from his voice. "How reliable is this?"

"It's pretty good, as far as all the evidence suggests. Good liars can keep it off their faces, but you can't hide it from a Gardevoir. There are those cases where they honestly believe what they're saying, but for a man who gave himself up and confessed voluntarily and without coercion, well…" He shrugged. "It's pretty foolproof here."

"So we're safe, right? We can stop hiding and being guarded?"

The policeman nodded. "Looks like it."

"Have you talked to the others yet?"

"We called them just after we called you. They all sounded very relieved."

They were at the door now, and the policeman stopped and extended his hand. "Thanks for coming in. Then we will need to hear from you as a witness once it gets to court; we'll call you about that."

Dave shook his hand and walked outside into the sun. They were free. Now Jean would come home and everything would be back to normal at last.

* * *

Gabriel didn't feel as much better as he had thought he would. He was glad nobody else would get hurt, in an oddly detached sort of way, but somehow knowing of his father's killer behind bars did nothing for his sense of justice, and the same dull bitterness still throbbed within him, more intensely than before if anything. It was frustrating to know he ought to be content while painfully aware that he wasn't in the least.

"Well, what would make you content?" Jack asked him sometime. "Isn't this just something only time can heal?"

"It's not that," said Gabriel, shaking his head, and it wasn't: it was not just grief. It was a sort of restless hunger for _something_, only he could not know what the something was – his best guess had been the incarceration of the murderer, but when that brought him no satisfaction, he was lost as to what could.

But did not explain it to Jack, figuring it would only make him more worried about him. Gabriel didn't like worrying other people.

* * *

Will sat on his bed, licking absent-mindedly at his fingertips. Jean was gone. The mattress she'd slept on was still on the floor below him, the red blanket crumpled and the pillow resting half on the floor, half on the edge of the mattress. It felt so long since he'd been completely alone. He wasn't really sure what to do with himself. What had he done with himself before she'd pretty much moved in with them, anyway?

He looked around the room for ideas and then under the bed. His ball of yarn was still lying there. It was just too tempting.

He stood up and locked the door out of habit, even though he knew his siblings weren't there: they'd fled the premises when Jean came over and had been staying with his friends. He took the ball out from under the bed and put it on the floor in front of him before sitting down and just staring at it.

It had been a while. Maybe he had grown out of it after all. He considered the possibility dully and could not bring himself to be happy about it.

The gold charm on his forehead itched and he reached up to scratch around it, but the more he scratched, the more it itched. He grabbed it in irritation, wishing he could just pull it off once and for all, and just like that, it came off, leaving only a cold tingle on the skin below it.

Will stared at the gold in his hand in disbelief. His first thought was that somehow he was evolving, turning into a Persian morph, but something made him instinctively know that that was not it.

_Pay Day,_ he realized absurdly, blinking at the coin.

The tingle in his forehead was turning into a hot, painful throb. He winced and touched the spot where his charm had been with his fingers; at first it was just hard and rough and bulging out disturbingly, but within a few seconds there was metal regrowing where the old charm had been, and a few seconds after that, it had been completely replaced, with only a faint throb of pain and the flat piece of gold in his hand to remind him that it had ever happened.

He blinked again at the coin. A surreal idea popped up in his head: maybe he could buy candy for it?

He thought about it for a second – no, there were Pokémon abuse laws in place to prevent the sale of Meowth charms – but then decided he kind of wanted to keep it, anyway. He put the gold piece carefully in his pocket.

Shouldn't he tell his parents? They always wanted to know when they exhibited new Pokémon traits. He looked up at the door and then back down to the white ball of yarn in front of him.

Aw, heck. He could tell them later.

* * *

A few days later, Gabriel gave up and did try to explain it, when he was in a particularly wretched mood and somewhere in the back of his consciousness kind of wanted Jack to worry about him after all.

"I feel like there's... there's lava bubbling up inside me and it's about to try to burst out," he said, but it sounded ridiculous, like some sort of a miserable pun on his condition. He clenched his fists around the plastic-coated sheets he was sitting on – his bed had been moved from their house into Jack's room when it had been decided he would stay with them – and shook his head before trying again. "Every day just makes me feel angrier. I don't even know who or what I'm angry at anymore. I thought it was the killer, but it's not."

Jack sat curled up opposite him on his own bed, listening, resting his head on his knees while his hands fiddled with his finger-webbing. He said nothing. Jack knew when Gabriel expected an answer and when he just wanted to vent to somebody he could trust. It was one of the reasons they had always bonded well.

"Maybe it's Dave," Gabriel went on, thinking aloud. "I still sometimes look at him and hate him for being alive, still strutting around and pretending everything revolves around him. Maybe I'm just angry at my dad for still being dead. Or all this stupid slime. Why didn't they abort me as a fetus again?" He paused. "Oh, right, the Stop Abortion Movement. Maybe I'm just angry at them." He looked up at Jack as if he could confirm or deny it.

"Do you think it could be some sort of a lust for revenge?" Jack asked after a moment's pause.

"Well, no," Gabriel replied in irritation. "I already told you. I didn't feel a thing when they caught the guy. I don't care about the killer. It has to be..."

"Well," Jack interrupted him, "maybe it's just not satisfying to you to just hear on the phone that they caught him. Maybe you wanted to... be involved with catching him yourself."

Gabriel stopped to think about it. He hadn't really considered it. "Why would that matter?" he replied stubbornly. "The end result is the same. He's in prison."

Jack hesitated. Then, "Really?"

It was a probing sort of 'Really', fishing for something in particular. Gabriel frowned at him. "What do you mean?"

Jack bit his lip, his gaze flicking nervously to the locked door. "Would you have wanted to... attack him? Fight him?"

Gabriel looked at him for a moment. "Maybe, I guess?" he said quizzically, and Jack looked away, his blue face turning a shade towards purple. "What're you thinking?"

"Don't you ever get... violent impulses?" he asked, jerking his head back towards Gabriel. "Wanting to punch random people? Attack them, hurt them...?"

"Kill them?" Gabriel suggested.

"Maybe." He flicked his gaze towards the door again. "I mean, I didn't get much of it when I was little, but I think it could be a hormonal thing that's just setting in now. These days, when people get on my nerves, I really want to attack them to show I'm better. Sometimes I want to fight random people I see just because I wonder if I could beat them."

Gabriel paused. "So you think it's because of the Pokémon genes?"

"It's the only reason I can think of," Jack replied with a nervous shrug. "For the impulse to be this strong, I mean. I've been wanting to ask all the others, but if it's just me, I don't really want to draw attention to it."

Gabriel nodded. The last thing they needed was convincing more people that they were dangerous subhumans that needed to be restrained somewhere far away from normal people.

A few seconds passed in silence. Then Jack asked quietly, "So have you felt anything like that?"

Gabriel thought about it and then shook his head. "Not really."

Jack looked away, his gaze distant, and Gabriel wished he could have told him they were the same. But he really had felt nothing of the sort – nothing he wouldn't think would be ordinary for a frustrated teenage human orphan, at the very least.

Did he want to personally hurt or kill his father's murderer? The thought of it was somewhat satisfying, maybe even more so than it ought to be for a normal person if he considered it – but he could tell that still wasn't quite it.

"I think I can use Spark," said Jack suddenly.

"Really?" Gabriel looked back at him.

"Yeah. I think we're all developing some more Pokémon powers. I heard Peter used a Quick Attack the other day, and Will did a Pay Day just a couple of days ago, and Lucy is starting to gain control of that primitive Shadow Ball she could do. And now I can use Spark. It's kind of neat, but still not very strong. Want to see?"

Gabriel nodded.

Jack reached for the switch to turn the lights off. He closed his eyes to concentrate, and the small lights at the ends of his antennae brightened visibly; he moved his right hand slowly upwards until it was right between the antennae, and then a bright yellow spark of electricity jumped from between the bulbs and his hand. He jumped, jerking his hand back down as he opened his eyes and began to shake his arm.

"It feels kinda numb afterwards," he explained, "but it's cool to know I can do it, right?" He looked brightly at Gabriel, who smiled.

"Yeah, it's pretty cool," he said, not sounding as enthusiastic as he would have liked.

Jack's smile faded. "What about you? Have you been discovering any cool new powers?"

Gabriel shook his head with a skewed smile. "I guess I just don't get any cool powers."

The other boy looked at him with regret. That worry and concern was creeping into his eyes again. "You might just discover them later," he suggested. "Maybe yours just need a bit more time."

If there was any time when Jack irritated Gabriel, it was when he was trying too hard to suggest a positive way of looking at being a half-Slugma. But his mood was beginning to get better and he didn't want to subject his friend to some sort of irritated remark on top of the confusion he must be feeling about his Pokémonlike fighting impulses, so he just shrugged. "So what now? Let out some steam by playing violent video games?"

Jack grinned, and seeing his friend smile made Gabriel somehow feel better, enough so to make him completely forget to mention the weird glint in Jack's eyes while they played and the way it intensified when his opponents exploded into splatters of gore.


	11. Chapter 11

"The hotdogs were good," said Mia as she stared through the side window of the car.

"You're welcome," Dave replied and darted an eye towards her to make sure the corners of her scythes weren't poking holes in the seat. There was a short silence.

"Why do people celebrate birthdays?" Mia asked suddenly.

"Well," Dave began but then paused to quickly turn a corner he'd almost missed. They jerked uncomfortably in their seats. Damn distractions.

Mia looked expectantly at him. "Well," he started again. "Today it's been forty-three years since your mother was born. So we celebrate it."

"I don't get it," Mia said and looked distractedly around for a few seconds, as if she wasn't going to continue. "Why you celebrate that," she then added.

"What's so hard to get?"

Mia looked directly at him. "It doesn't make any sense," she said. "Years and days don't even line up right. Maybe the real time when the earth has gone around the sun once since the birth is tomorrow. Maybe it was this morning but we're celebrating it tonight. It doesn't have any meaning that it's still the same day. And it doesn't have any meaning anyway that the earth has gone around the sun so many times since your birth. None of it makes sense."

Dave sighed; Mia was going philosophical on him again. "It's just a nice excuse to give people presents. Nobody cares how many circles the earth has gone around the sun or whatever. You're thinking about it too much."

"Presents," Mia repeated with a nod. There was another one of those few-second silences where she made Dave think she wasn't going to continue. "I like presents."

"See? That's why we have birthdays."

"As long as it's a good present," Mia went on as if he hadn't spoken. "I don't like getting bad presents."

Giving Mia presents had been a nightmarish task the first few years. Then they'd realized it was best just to stick with giving her meat and things she could cut.

Pause. "I didn't get her anything," Mia said in her usual neutral voice.

"Well, I got her something," Dave replied. "It can be from both of us if you want."

Mia shrugged in a way that could have been indifference or agreement. Dave supposed it didn't really matter.

He'd gotten Cheryl a Miltank in some third-world country. Some church-sponsored charity crap, trying to make donations feel more physical by giving you a photo of a Miltank for a set price that would supposedly buy one for a starving family and might single-handedly save their lives and future for generations to come, according to the probably exaggerated little booklet about it. Cheryl was all over charities like that. He'd figured the best way to make up for coming on to her the other day was to give her something personal that she would really like, but it had to be something that could not be taken the wrong way. This was the best thing he'd come up with, and reluctant as he was to do business with any sort of church, she was more important. Besides, it was just a charity; it didn't actually have anything to do with religion.

He turned into the Kerrigans' home street. On the corner stood that creepy, pale, dark-haired fundamentalist guy with the sign again – he hadn't seen him in a while. What had his name been again? The man looked at Dave as they passed and grinned widely. Creepy fuck.

"It was him," said Mia matter-of-factly.

"Hm?"

"It was him," she repeated. "Who killed Brian."

Dave turned his head sharply towards her and turned back just in time to avoid driving up onto the sidewalk. "What? Don't be ridiculous. That's not him. They caught him, remember?"

Mia shook her head. "It was him. Must have got the wrong guy."

Dave laughed for a moment but stopped when he realized how nervous he sounded. "That's ridiculous. Why the fuck would you think that?"

"The way he looked at you."

"You can't tell who killed a guy by just watching how he looks at some other guy, for fuck's sake." Dave glanced in the rear-view mirror. The man had turned around and was still watching them.

"The tendons in his neck tensed. And then he bared his teeth."

"That's what you call a fucking smile."

"His pupils dilated. The index finger twitched a little when he was remembering how he pulled the trigger."

"What are you now, fucking psychic?" He pulled into the driveway. "Look, they had a real psychic down at the police station. They have the right guy, okay?"

"It was him," Mia just repeated, in the exact same tone as before.

"Bullshit." Dave stopped the car, pulled the key out of the ignition and opened the door, throwing Mia a glance. She casually opened the door at her own side as she would any other time.

As he knocked on the front door, Dave looked quickly down the street, but the man was gone.

"Hi," said Cheryl warmly as she opened the door, giving each of them a quick smile in turn. "We have a bit of a surprise visitor at the moment, so I hope you don't mind..."

She gestured for them to come inside. In the sofa sat a distraught-looking plump woman in a plain maroon dress, hunched over and fiddling nervously with her hands.

"Who is that?" Dave asked. The woman looked quickly up and gave him a look of what he could only call terror; she sat there frozenly for a second but didn't reply.

Howard, sitting opposite her, gave Dave a glare.

"She says she knows something about Brian," Cheryl murmured. "The murder, I mean."

The woman, who had turned back towards Howard, shot a quick glance their way and Dave suddenly realized it was Mia she was looking at with terror, not him. Cheryl gestured silently at the girl and the Scyther morph obediently walked into her room and closed the door.

The woman shook her head absent-mindedly, her orange-red curls swishing in front of her face. She straightened herself, brushed them aside, gave Howard, Cheryl and Dave a quick glance each, and then stared down at her lap again. She licked her lips and swallowed, as if just to demonstrate every nervous gesture known to man.

"M-my name is Monica Sellers," she began at last. There were a few seconds of silence. "I'm a member of your church." She looked at Howard, very quickly, and then back down. Another silence.

"Yes?" Howard said carefully.

The woman nodded quickly. "I'm also among a group of churchgoers who meet regularly to discuss..." She stopped and glanced around once more. "They organized the attack on..."

Howard and Cheryl both glanced at Dave; he shuddered inwardly at the memory.

Monica Sellers took a deep breath. "I'm here because... I think what they did was wrong."

"No shit," Dave interjected; the woman flinched visibly. Howard gave him another glare.

"The... the one who hatched the plan... was Isaac Daniels. He also did the..." She trailed off, glancing at Dave.

"Isaac? I thought his name was Jacob or something."

Monica Sellers shook her head frantically. "Jacob is his brother. They sent him to take the blame so the police would stop watching over you."

Dave looked at the door to Mia's room, feeling sick. This had to be some sort of a joke.

"You're full of shit," he managed to say. "They had a fucking Gardevoir. He said he did it and wasn't working with anybody and he wasn't lying."

The woman looked blankly at him. He felt his heart pounding in his chest, anger rising in his throat. "You're just fucking with us!" he shouted, louder than he'd intended. "It was that one nut who did the shooting and now you're trying to make us get all in a panic again by taking credit for it. Crazy fundamentalist fucks!"

"N-no," the woman stammered, flinching again. "I swear I..."

Dave felt something move by his thigh and jumped before realizing it was his cellphone vibrating. He pulled it out of his pocket, turned around and took a deep breath to calm himself down before opening it to answer. "Hello?"

_"Hello, David Ambrose,"_ said a smooth, calm voice on the other end.

"Who are you?"

_"My name is Isaac Daniels. We met earlier."_

An uncomfortable cold shiver trickled ever so slowly down Dave's spine. "What the fuck do you want?"

_"We have the Slugma boy."_

He froze.

"What?" he asked weakly and heard his voice tremble.

_"A woman named Monica Sellers has been talking to you. If you tell the police what she told you or anything about the kidnapping, the hybrid dies. Do you understand?"_

"What the fuck." Dave tried to get the gears started in his brain again. "You're bluffing."

There was a distorted sigh on the other end. _"Call his phone. He will tell you himself if he needs to. Rest assured that if you inform the police of anything, we will know and will be happy to keep our end of the deal. Goodbye, Mr. Ambrose."_

* * *

While Gabriel waited for Jack's mom to pick him up for the birthday party, he flipped through the first few pages of one of the comic books he'd just bought. It was pretty bloody, he noted – Jack would love it. He'd definitely show it to him at the party. Maybe, if the other morphs were the same, they'd be all over it too.

He looked up to scan the street for Sharon's car, but there wasn't a person in sight. Jack had gone with his dad earlier to get a present for Cheryl. He'd opted to go to the comic book store instead and get picked up later when Sharon got out of work. He didn't like going to the bigger shopping streets where there would be people wrinkling their noses at him everywhere. At least the guys at the comic book store were used to him and that street was less travelled. And he'd still told her to pick him up in a side street a couple of blocks away, where he was comfortably sure nobody would be around. Sitting on a bench here, where all the city sounds were kind of muted, was strangely calm and peaceful. It made him feel almost normal.

Somebody clamped a hand over his mouth from behind.

He yelped in surprise as two sets of strong, gloved hands pulled him over the back of the bench and grabbed hold of his arms. He tried frantically to kick backwards and scream for help with feeble results and then to bring his feet down to stop them from dragging him, but it didn't even slow them down. He tried to turn his head to see the men or where they were taking him, but the hand over his mouth was holding his head in place.

He was thrown into the back seat of a car and finally got to look at one of the men – it was a tall, muscular guy, but he had a white scarf tied around his face as a makeshift mask – as the man sat down in the seat beside him, all the while pointing a small pistol straight at him. Gabriel pressed against the back of the seat, his throat dry, and tried not to move as the car jerked into motion. The man pulled out another scarf, a red one, and handed it to Gabriel, who looked blankly at his captor.

"Tie it over your eyes," the man said through his own scarf. "Now." He thrust the gun towards Gabriel for emphasis; he flinched, accepted the scarf carefully and began to tie it around his head.

The murky reddish darkness behind the scarf was somehow calming. He tried to tie it as tightly as he could behind his head and then lowered his hands very slowly when he was done. A hand felt briefly around the scarf; the man grunted in approval and then, judging from the sound, took the scarf away from his own face.

"Don't move," said the man's voice, now unmuffled. "Don't try to take it off. Don't try anything."

Gabriel hadn't been planning to.

He took a shaky breath and tried to get his brain back into thinking-mode. He couldn't really; everything was sort of whirling around – kidnapping, must be still, guy had a _gun_ pointed at him, what did they want? He dimly heard the man beside him talking on the phone but didn't have the presence of mind to process just what he was saying. Kidnapping. Were they holding him for ransom? They might kill him. The guy had a gun. What had happened to his comic books? He must have dropped them on the bench. What would Sharon think when he wasn't there? Jack would be worried sick.

"Wh... what..." he began when the chaos in his mind began to settle on the question of what the kidnappers wanted, but his lips were still not quite reconnected to his brain and his mouth was still uncomfortably dry. "Why...?"

"You are a hostage," said the man beside him, apparently no longer on the phone, though Gabriel hadn't noticed when that happened. "As long as you don't try anything and nobody calls the police, we won't kill you. Be still."

Nobody calls the police? About what? Gabriel tried to make sense of it; his brain alternated between thinking they meant about the kidnapping and thinking that would be circular logic. He couldn't really think clearly enough to tell which was right. Not with a gun pointed at his head.

His cellphone started vibrating in his pocket. He turned his head towards the man beside him, not sure if he could answer it. The man shoved his own hand into the pocket instead and picked up the phone; Gabriel heard the soft click of it opening. Then...

_"Gabriel? Please tell me you're there."_

"Dave?" he called without thinking. "I've been kidnapped as a hostage and they have me in some car and I think we're heading..." Cold metal pressed against the side of his head and he froze, not daring to even breathe: the feeling of the weapon there made it suddenly seem real in a way it hadn't before.

_"Oh, shit. Fuck. Gabriel? Are you still..."_

The phone snapped shut again; it did not come back into Gabriel's pocket.

A few slow seconds passed; Gabriel felt his heart thumping in his chest as he held his breath, shivering at the touch of what he knew was the muzzle of the gun. Finally, slowly, the man pulled it back and he managed to exhale. He sucked in another breath, still trembling, but the man was silent and the gun didn't touch him again. Even after the initial shock wore off, the knowledge that the gun was still _there_, somewhere off to his left, kept his thoughts from wandering; whatever he tried to think about was jerked back to the horrifying reality by the memory of feeling it pressed to his head.

With the reddish darkness still covering his vision, the world soon became nothing but the gun, the noise of the car engine and his heavy breaths and thumping heartbeats, each of them sending more chilling terror pulsing through his veins.


	12. Chapter 12

Dave closed his cellphone, turned around and looked blankly at Cheryl, then Howard, then Monica Sellers. They stared back at him, eyes wide.

"It's true. They have Gabriel. Goddamn it." He placed a hand over his face and tried to think. "He's bluffing. He has to be bluffing. How are they going to know if we talk to the police? They couldn't possibly know."

"They could," whispered Monica. "At least one of them is in the police force. Maybe more. I don't know."

"In the police force? The _fuck_." Dave paced back and forth around the floor. "That would explain the fucking Gardevoir test. Who the fuck lets fundies on the force?" It was that officer who was with the Gardevoir, then – or maybe somebody who had trained it. It could be fucking anybody. Even that apparently nice Officer Russell, if he was a good actor.

"And how the fuck did they know to kidnap him?" Dave went on. "There's no way he followed you here and cooked up and executed a fucking kidnapping plan in the time it took for you to tell us about it." He looked over at Monica, who flinched under his gaze.

"Actually I…" she began in a quiet, high-pitched voice that then broke. She tried again. "I told him what I meant to do yesterday."

Dave stared at her. "You fucking _told_ him you were going to rat him out?"

She looked mortified. "I thought that… I thought he would cancel it all if I threatened to warn you. And he didn't."

"You thought…? Oh, Christ. You _idiot_. Why didn't you go straight to the fucking police the moment you snapped out of it and realized he's a psycho?"

She shook her head, in tears now. "I couldn't… I felt…"

"And guess what. Now we _can't_ call the fucking police, because they have Gabriel and could kill him. And that leaves them peace and quiet to come and gun us all down whenever they're ready. Goddamn it."

He walked quickly to the nearest window, looked briefly outside for suspicious people and then pulled the curtains to cover it. He did the same with the other windows in the room. Howard and Cheryl watched him silently.

"Look, here's what we'll do," Dave went on. "You call everybody, tell them the party's off and they should get the fuck away from here. Then we try to stay behind solid walls…" He trailed off. "Fuck, what if they try to set fire to the house?"

"Dave," Cheryl said gently, laying a hand on his shoulder. "Calm down. Judging from the attack on you and Brian, they won't strike in broad daylight. When everyone is here, it will be easier to talk it over properly and figure out just how we should respond."

"How the fuck can we respond? If we do anything, they kill Gabriel. If we don't do anything, they find an opportunity to kill us and then kill Gabriel too."

Cheryl was silent for a moment as Dave buried his hands in his hair and paced back and forth in an attempt to think. They were interrupted by a knock on the door; everyone turned sharply towards it and hesitated before Cheryl hastily walked over to open it.

"Happy birthday," said Bill and Jack cheerfully in unison, the Chinchou morph holding forward a large giftwrapped box. "Are Sharon and Gabriel here yet?"

* * *

There was a long silence when everyone was finally there and everything had been explained.

"Well?" Jack asked, feeling his pulse uncomfortably in his throat. "What are we going to do?"

"We could talk to the police anyway," Howard suggested with little conviction. "It could be kept to a select few individuals, people who can be trusted."

"How do we know their guy isn't the one answering the telephone?" Dave replied immediately, still pacing back and forth around the floor, though now with a glass of beer in his hand.

"We could hire somebody to investigate it," said Sharon.

"What sort of a private investigator would take a case that requires him to save a kidnapped half-Slugma from a bunch of armed religious fanatics?"

There was another long silence.

"Christ," said Dave, shaking his head before he took a long sip from his glass, "I don't think there's anything we _can_ do." He paused for a moment and then without warning began to chuckle madly. "Actually, the smartest fucking thing in the situation is to just call the police anyway and save ourselves, because Gabriel's dead no matter _what_ we do."

Something in Jack's chest twisted itself into a knot and made him nauseous. He tried to tell himself there was no way it was a serious suggestion, because Dave was still burying his head in his hands like he didn't expect an answer and nobody else seemed to think it was even worthy of comment, or were they actually considering it? No, they couldn't be. They wouldn't.

"Perhaps we could try to wait it out," said Joe, Will's father, after a pause. "Maybe they'll change their minds or..."

Dave let out a short burst of hysterical laughter and Joe trailed off without finishing. There was yet another silence as everyone gave uncomfortable glances to one another.

"Maybe we should sleep on it," said Cheryl at last. "They won't kill Gabriel while they can still use him to keep us from calling the police. Somebody can keep watch in case they try anything tonight, and we can attempt to defend ourselves somehow."

She looked around at everyone; they looked back at her and at everyone else in silence. Dave slumped exhaustedly down on the couch and squeezed his eyes shut.

"So, what?" Jack asked loudly. "We're not going to do _anything_?"

"We _can't_ fucking do anything!" Dave snapped and slammed his fist down on the coffee table with a bang that made everyone shudder. "What the hell do you expect us to do about it? If you're going to be a naïve little idiot thinking you can rush in and rescue him or something, you can go do that yourself and get gunned down like Brian, but those of us without a goddamn hero complex are not going to get ourselves killed with you. Fucking _shit_."

Jack looked at him for a moment, feeling as if he'd just been slapped in the face. Everyone's eyes were on him or Dave, all of them still too stunned to speak.

He quickly turned around, walked into Mia and Lucy's room and slammed the door behind him before they'd had the chance to respond.

* * *

Jack lay awake that night, listening to the sound of the other morphs breathing all around him in their sleeping bags. Lucy's ghostly form stood by the window, the pink-tipped strands of her hair floating eerily behind her head, and watched for suspicious people with all her senses.

Technically, he supposed, their parents were right. Gabriel was theoretically safe for as long as he was useful to his captors alive, and for as long as the police didn't know anything, he would be. And Lucy was largely nocturnal anyway and could sense new presences in the vicinity, allowing her to alert them if they came, and then they could be prepared. Dave had gone out and bought some guns for use in self-defense if it came to that.

But he was still afraid. After all, these people's long-term goal, according to Monica Sellers, was to kill all of them, including Gabriel; the moment they decided keeping him around was more trouble than it was worth, they would murder him in a heartbeat. And though Isaac had called earlier that night to let them hear Gabriel's voice again and tell them he would call twice a day to assure them they were keeping their end of the deal, that was still only twice a day and would give the kidnappers twelve hours' headstart before _they_ noticed anything – plenty of time to execute a plan to murder as many of them as possible.

He looked around the room and suddenly realized that Lucy's big, hypnotic eyes were looking at him.

"You're scared," she said quietly.

Jack's first instinct was to deny it and try to convince her there was nothing to worry about, but the very thought of pretending everything was okay made him feel hollow and empty. Instead, he just nodded and looked down at his webbed fingers, faintly lit by the glow of his antennae.

"If you're scared, you should talk to them," Lucy said, blinking innocently at him. Jack wasn't sure how much she understood of what was going on and what he was thinking. He wasn't even sure what 'them' she was referring to. But somehow, he still felt like she was right: he would like to talk to somebody, if only to get things off his chest.

He looked around the room again. If he was going to talk to anyone, it was the other morphs, and preferably someone mature enough to understand. Katherine was lying on her side in a sleeping bag near him, one rose-hand sprawled limply on the floor; she was physically the 'oldest' of them, but she was also slow and groggy without sunlight, so waking her up in the middle of the night was probably not the best idea. Just after her in mental age was Mia, but she was plenty disturbed enough to make her a poor choice for a comforting conversation.

The next candidates, then, were Will and Jean, and Jean was certainly no pinnacle of maturity, so although Will was pretty shy and reserved and generally didn't talk much, Jack figured he was his best bet.

He glanced back at Lucy, who had resumed staring out the window, and then climbed carefully over Katherine to get to the Meowth morph, who was curled up in a ball in his sleeping bag.

"Will?" Jack touched his shoulder carefully.

"Mm." Will curled himself up tighter, smiling in his sleep, and after a second began to let out a soft, purring noise. Jack watched him in disbelief, some part of him balking at the idea he could be purring at a time like this.

"Will, wake up," he muttered and gave him a push. This time the purr stopped instantly and Will jerked his head up, his big eyes flicking open.

"Jack?" he asked sleepily. "What is it?"

"I just wanted to talk."

"Talk? About what?" Will yawned.

"This whole thing," Jack said. "You know, I really think we should do something."

Will blinked. "About Gabriel, you mean?" he asked after a moment.

"Yes, about Gabriel," Jack answered, trying to beat down his disturbing urge to punch the other boy. "These people want to kill him. It's just a question of when. They're never going to just let him go, and if it's ever slightly inconvenient to keep him around, they'll decide it's not worth it. The longer we wait, the likelier they'll just go _fuck it_ and..."

Jack trailed off, not really wanting to finish that thought, and realized suddenly that all the morphs were awake and looking at him. It registered vaguely that maybe he had raised his voice a bit somewhere in the middle of that rant. Lucy smiled at him from her position by the window.

"What's going on?" asked Katherine, her voice a bit slurred as she rubbed her eyes.

"I was just telling Will we need to do something," Jack said, not bothering to keep his voice down now. "We can't just sit around waiting. They want us all dead, including him. All that's keeping them from killing him right now is that they're using him to stop us from calling the police, and even if they do kill him, it could be twelve hours before we realize there's anything wrong, and by that point they could have killed us all. And we can't call anybody. We have to step in ourselves and do something about it." He took a deep breath. "And really, we can do something about it. Have you all forgotten we're Pokémorphs? We can use Pokémon moves now! We have powers! If we could just find where they're keeping him, we could sneak in and free him, and then we can call the police when he's safe and have the killers finally put in jail." He looked around at all of them and dreaded for a split second that they would all start to argue and not want to risk their lives on a rescue operation and yell at him, just like Dave had.

But they didn't. For a few seconds they were all quiet, and then Peter piped up, "Sounds cool. I'm in."

Will looked at Jack. "Well... it sounds dangerous, but I guess if anybody can save him, it's us."

"We'll go there and torch all the bad guys, right?" asked Jean brightly.

Jack resisted the urge to slap his forehead; he needed the support. "Yes," he said decisively. "We'll torch all the bad guys, and we'll save Gabriel, and everything is going to be fine."

"But how do we actually find out where they're keeping him?" Will asked, looking around. "We can't really do anything without knowing that."

"I know," Jack said and sighed, closing his eyes to think, and an idea hit him almost immediately. "Felicia!" he said excitedly. "Growlithe have a great sense of smell! If we just go to the place where they took him – it must have been where Sharon was going to pick him up from the comic book store – she might be able to smell where he was – smell the car they put him in – maybe even follow the car –"

"That's crazy," Katherine interrupted groggily. "That was in the afternoon. It's the middle of the night now. How many cars do you think have been parked in the same spot and driven the same streets since then? How would Felicia work out which layer of generic car smell it is that leads to the right place?"

"Well, it's something," Jack snapped. "Do _you_ have a better idea? Or do you think we should just sit here and let them kill Gabriel?"

Katherine swallowed. "No," she said quietly.

"At least it's worth a try. And there could be more clues at the location where they took him, too. All we need to do is get there."

The others were all silent, waiting for him to go on.

"Well... Katherine got a couple of driving lessons with her dad, right?" He looked hopefully at the Roselia girl.

"What?" she asked, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. "You want to steal our car and have me drive it without a license?"

"Nobody here has a license! And we can't tell our parents about it. They'd stop us."

"And maybe there's a good reason for that." Katherine looked anxiously at him. "I wish we could save Gabriel too, I do, but the way to do that isn't to put ourselves in as much danger as possible."

"But that's not…" Jack looked around at the others in frustration. "Let's have a vote, all right? If more than half of us want to go, I'll be driving the car and I don't care that I don't know how. Okay? I want to save Gabriel because he's my best friend and these people want to murder him, and they won't release him by will no matter what we do, so we have to get him released by force. Katherine?" He tried to look neutral as he turned towards her, but it came out as a resentful glare anyway.

Katherine took a deep breath. "I'd want to help Gabriel if I thought we actually _could_, but realistically… we just can't. We don't know where he is. The clues Jack wants us to chase are almost definitely dead ends. Even if we did find out where he is, they're probably armed and won't think twice before shooting us, and the little we have in the way of Pokémon attacks is pretty pathetic. It seems to me we would just be endangering ourselves with little to no chance of actually succeeding at rescuing him. It's a terrible situation, but..." She bit her lip. "I just can't see this helping anyone."

Jack swallowed and resisted the urge to shout at her, try to slap some sense into her. "Will?"

The Meowth morph looked unsurely around. "Well..." he began, "what Katherine's saying makes a lot of sense, but are we really any better off here?" He looked around at the others. "They could come here any time and try to kill us, and even if we have weapons, it doesn't really make us safe. If we go somewhere, at least they won't know where we are. And who knows; maybe if they notice we're gone when they come, they won't attack our parents, since it's really us they want." He looked hopefully up at Jack. "And Dave too, I guess," he added in a mutter.

"He's right," Jack said. "It's not like we aren't in danger if we stay here. We'll be on the run, and we might save Gabriel too. What have we got to lose? Jean?"

"I say we go and kick their asses!" the Vulpix girl said happily with an emphasizing punch to her sleeping bag.

"Peter?"

"Gabriel was my friend too. I want to try to help him, no matter what it takes."

"Lucy?"

"I have to stay here and watch," said the Misdreavus girl, still facing the window.

"Right. You'll take good care of our parents, okay? Mia?"

The Scyther morph sat for a moment staring blankly ahead, contemplating it. "I'll get to fight them?"

"Yes, hopefully, you'll get to fight them," Jack replied patiently.

She nodded. "Then I'll come."

"Great." Jack turned back to the Roselia girl, his expression stern. "So, Katherine. Am I driving, or will you?"

She sighed, rubbing her forehead. "Fine. I'll do it. But not now. It's the middle of the night. I might as well be driving drunk. We can sneak out when the sun rises and my head starts clearing, okay?"

* * *

Some of the others managed to get a bit of sleep after this (Katherine, in particular, was fast asleep five minutes after things had quieted down), but Jack didn't; he was too worked up to feel tired. In his mind, he laid out a careful plan for what they'd do once they found out where they were keeping Gabriel, while pushing aside all nagging doubts. After he'd gone over it too many times to think he'd be able to add to it, he spent the rest of the night practicing his Spark while all too aware of the eyes of the other non-sleeping morphs on him.

Then, finally, the first rays of the sun made their way into the room, and he sprang up to wake Katherine.

"Mwuh?" she mumbled as he shook her. "Oh, Jesus, I'm going to be terrible until a couple of hours from now."

"That doesn't matter," Jack hissed at her. "Our parents could be up a couple of hours from now. We have to get going."

"I don't know how you goaded me into this," she muttered, but she stood up anyway, and after several frantic insistences for everyone to be as quiet as possible, Jack opened the bedroom door as silently as he could and they tiptoed out into the hall while Lucy waved absent-mindedly after them from her position by the window.

Jack crept towards the front door and opened it, also as quietly as he could. This early on a Saturday, there was nobody in the streets. His heart was racing as the others came through the door; he saw a movement in a bush across the street and jumped, but it was just a Murkrow taking off. As Mia came through the door, the last of them, Jack moved to close it, slowly and carefully.

He exhaled finally when he took his hand off the doorknob. "Okay," he said quietly. "You took the keys, Katherine?"

She nodded nervously, blinking towards the sunrise. "This is a terrible idea," she muttered, sounding more scared than irritated now that some of the grogginess had faded. Nonetheless, she walked shakily towards her parents' car and opened it. "Get in. Hopefully we can fit four of you in the back seat."

Since nobody wanted to be beside Mia in a cramped space, she had an automatic claim to the passenger seat. As Katherine struggled to fasten her seatbelt with her flaplike fingers, Jack, Will, Jean and Peter managed to squeeze themselves together into the back seat.

"I don't suppose you can get your belts on like this?" Katherine asked anxiously, glancing at them in the rear-view mirror; they shook their heads. "Oh, God, this is an awful idea. We shouldn't be doing this."

"It's too late now," Jack said firmly. "We have to get going before our parents wake up. First stop, our place."

"All the way over in Taillow Springs." Katherine sighed. "What are we doing? I can't drive."

"Yes, you can," Jack insisted. "There's no traffic now. You'll be fine. Just start the car."

After closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she did. The engine whirred to life. She grabbed the steering wheel as well as she could before remembering she was still in parking gear, and she silently thanked God that at least she didn't have to drive stick. Another deep breath and she shifted to reverse; then she stepped extremely slowly and carefully on the gas pedal, only to realize the handbrake was still on.

"Okay, look, I can't do this. I'm forgetting everything. Can we please just stay?"

"We voted on it."

Katherine shook her head and took a few breaths to steel herself. She carefully released the handbrake and then managed to back the car into the middle of the street, where she had to spend a moment to try to get a decent grip on the steering wheel before turning it. Eventually they were on the right half of the street and she got the car straight before pressing a bit harder down on the gas and getting it up to an acceptable speed, and finally the worst was over for now.

* * *

It was a forty-five minute drive to the neighbouring town, but they met nobody on the way; in fact, had that not been what they'd been hoping for, the general emptiness of the streets would probably have been unnerving. The drive itself was about as uneventful as they could have hoped, though Katherine had a hard time making sharp turns thanks to her hands' poor grasp on the steering wheel. Once they'd entered Taillow Springs, Jack gave her directions to his home, where he quickly ran inside to get Felicia in her Pokéball, and then to the comic book store, which she hadn't been to often enough to remember the way.

"Right," said Jack as they stepped out of the car in a parking lot close to the store after Katherine had just barely managed to park the car. "I think I heard Gabriel talk about how he'd be up in... _that_ street." He pointed decisively up towards the small side street. Without further words, they walked there, all the while looking nervously around for people or murderers. By now it was slightly less empty than it had been on the way, with a few cars making their way around the downtown streets, but none came close enough to be likely to notice they weren't just a normal disparate group of kids and teens taking an early-Saturday morning walk.

They entered the street, and Jack's heart stung horribly as he recognized the bag from the comic book store still lying there on a bench, a book lying discarded on the sidewalk under it. He ran over and picked it up, wiping the grime off the pages (he couldn't help noticing that it had been lying open on a fold in the middle of a scene where one character was bashing another's brains in with a baseball bat, and there was something disturbingly satisfying about it) and put it back into the bag. "It's his," he said quietly, looking up as the others hurried towards him. "He was here."

They stood there silently for a moment, looking at the bag in Jack's hands, before he had the presence of mind to drop Felicia's Pokéball onto the ground. The Growlithe materialized in a burst of light and looked happily around at the group of them before apparently picking up on the gloomy atmosphere; the eager swishing of her tail slowed down to a crawl and she sat down with a soft whine.

"Felicia," said Jack, "Gabriel's lost. We need you to help us find him. Okay?"

The dog Pokémon tilted her head for a moment but then gave an affirmative bark and got to work with sniffing at and around the bench. She quickly found a trail leading from behind the bench and followed it for a few meters, where she stopped and barked proudly. Jack quickly came over to see what she had found: there was a familiar-looking dirty glob of orange slime on the ground.

"Good girl!" he said excitedly, his heart racing. "Go on!"

The Growlithe continued eagerly, wagging her tail all the while. Gabriel's scent led her over to the very parking lot they'd parked in and to the spot next to where they'd parked (Jack shuddered), and there, of course, the trail ended. He asked the Pokémon if she could follow the car, but Felicia just tilted her head with a soft whine; as far as she could tell, Gabriel had simply been abducted by aliens right there.

They looked glumly at the puppy for a moment in silence. Jack sighed. What had he been expecting, honestly? Some sort of a Lassie movie where the dog miraculously saves the day? He recalled Felicia into her Pokéball and just stood there for a few seconds, knot in his stomach, tears burning in his eyes.

Jean's cellphone chose this moment to start ringing with a horribly loud and obnoxiously cheery pop tune.

She reached into her pocket and, oblivious to the wretched stares of all the others, took several seconds to fish the phone out, the ringtone only growing more intolerable when it was no longer muffled by the fabric of her jeans. With a practised motion that somehow combined checking the caller ID, opening the phone and swinging her arm upwards, she held the phone to her ear and said, in a tone nearly as cheery as her ringtone, "Hi, Dad!"

_"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"_ was the answer, clearly audible to anyone within a ten-foot radius.

"We're saving Gabriel!" Jean replied excitedly. "We took the Harrisons' car, and Katherine could totally drive it all the way over here! And Felicia can smell Gabriel, so we're going to go and torch all the bad guys!"

_"What the... you're sneaking around up at the Church of Holy Truth? Katherine driving? Are you fucking insane? We wake up and go to check on you, and suddenly Lucy's alone and telling us you fucking went to play superheroes? Christ, Jean, just get back here right now. This isn't some fucking kids' action movie where the good guys win. This is real life with real-life murderers waiting to murk the life out of you because the invisible man in the sky told them to do it. You're just a bunch of kids. By God, Jean, you're all going to fucking die. Please don't do this to me."_

Over the course of this rant, Dave's voice became less angry and more pathetically desperate. Jean sniffled and looked unsurely around at the others; Jack's heart thumped as his brain processed everything Dave had just said.

"Give me that," he said quickly, but didn't wait for Jean to voluntarily give her the cellphone before he'd torn it out of her hand. "The Church of Holy Truth?" he said into it. "That's what you said? They're keeping Gabriel there?"

There was a short pause. _"Oh, what the fuck? You didn't know...? Look, forget I said anything about that. Just get back here already. Your parents are all worried sick about you."_

"They want us more than you," Jack replied, his heart still racing. Church of Holy Truth. "If they realize we're not there anymore, you're safer than you are with us. Just stay there and keep safe. We're going to try and save Gabriel, no matter what it takes."

He hung up immediately, before Dave had begun to answer; he didn't want to hear it. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and then looked at the others, who were staring at him.

"We know where they're keeping him now," he said. "Or we know the name of the place. Looking up where that is is easy. We can go do this now. If you want to go home, go ahead, but this is what we came here for, and every one of you that helps gives us better chances. And don't listen to Dave. We're not just a bunch of kids. We're a bunch of _Pokémorphs_. We can do this."

Nobody volunteered to leave, but nobody responded with a particular enthusiasm, either. He could tell they were worried, scared; they looked at one another, doubtfully, gauging one another's reactions in silence.

"Come on," he said, gritting his teeth. "Gabriel is going to _die_ if we don't do something."

They murmured some uncertain agreement.

"Great. So let's go."

Jack marched over to the car, and the others followed hesitantly behind, except for Katherine, who caught up with him, grabbed his arm and pulled him aside while vaguely telling the others they needed to discuss driving.

"There's something that bothers me," she said quietly as the others were getting into the car.

"Oh?"

"It didn't really register this morning when I was all groggy, but... why didn't they attack last night?"

Jack looked at her. Deep down, that had been nagging at him, too; if they were going to attack them, why hadn't they done so at the first opportunity, when their victims would be the least prepared? But he still just shrugged and replied, "Maybe they needed time to plan or get ready."

Katherine glanced at him. "Really?"

Jack shrugged as nonchalantly as he could. They couldn't start getting paranoid now.

"And how does Dave know where they're keeping Gabriel?"

Jack shrugged again, wishing she would just stop. "He's the one who spoke to them on the phone. Maybe Gabriel managed to tell him."

"But why would they let that happen? It's almost like…"

"Almost like _what_, Katherine?" Jack snapped, looking at her. "What are you trying to say?"

She bit her lip. "Doesn't this all seem a bit… too easy?"

Yes. Of course it did. "What are you talking about?"

"It's almost as if… they _want_ us to come for him."

She looked at him, and he looked back, biting back the thought.

"Think about it," Katherine went on, carefully. "They've got someone we love. There are better ways to exploit that than just as leverage to prevent us from calling the police. Normally kidnappers do it because of what the family is willing to do to get the child safe. And what they actually want… is us."

Bait. Gabriel had been made into the bait in a Pokémorph-trap. Jack clenched his fist tightly in anger.

"We're not leaving him behind," he said quietly. "We're on to them now. We'll be prepared and be careful, and we'll surprise them, and we'll save him anyway."

Katherine looked anxiously at him. "Jack…"

"Don't you 'Jack' me!" he snapped. "Gabriel is my best friend, and I would gladly die for the chance he could be saved. I'll go alone if I have to, but don't try to stop me. Please."

He looked desperately at her, and for a moment he wanted to just go home with the others and hope somehow everything would magically be okay.

But nothing was ever magically okay. The only way to make things right was to act, no matter how hopeless and horrifying the prospect was, and at least if he failed he wouldn't have to live with the dread of constantly wondering what Gabriel could be going through. And so he steeled himself, looked away, and said, "Well? Are you coming?"

Katherine was silent for a moment. "We'll have to talk to the others," she finally said. He nodded without words, his throat dry, and they went back over to the car, where the others had gotten in already. She explained the bait theory to them as they watched, wide-eyed, and there was a long silence.

"I think we can surprise them," Jack said, sensing the unease in the others. "We can spend a little while practicing our Pokémon moves before we go. We can try to disguise ourselves so they won't be able to gun us down from a distance. We could even buy a good TM and teach it to Felicia so she can help. But I understand if you're afraid and don't want to get involved. All I know is that _I'm_ going no matter what, and my chances are better the more of you come with me." He took a deep breath. "Even then, don't come for my sake. Come for Gabriel's sake. And if you don't want to come, then don't."

There was another doubtful silence.

"But really," Jack found himself adding all of a sudden, "haven't you ever felt _restless_? Like you want to get into a fight and win, and to show the world what you can do? Aren't you ever more excited by violence than you know you should be? Don't you ever just want to solve your problems the physical way? Don't you ever want to _act_?"

"I feel like that all the time!" Jean replied immediately, her eyes sparkling with excitement. "I want to kill the bad people who took Gabriel!"

There was an awkward silence for a moment, and then they all started speaking at once, confirming that yes, actually they all felt that way sometimes, or a lot of the time, or constantly in Mia's case – even Katherine admitted reluctantly that she had disturbingly violent urges once in a blue moon and there was something irrationally satisfying about the idea of trying to rescue someone in danger.

Within minutes they had all agreed to continue on their mission, with Katherine the only one somewhat reluctant, and as she started the car again, Jack felt for the first time like it was really all going to work out.


	13. Chapter 13

Peter stepped out of the Grace City Department Store and hurried into the alley behind the building, quickly unwrapping the Fire Stone and Fire Blast TM he'd bought. The others were sitting around and waiting for him there; Jack stood up as soon as Peter came in, with Jean following.

"You got them?" Jack asked urgently.

"Yeah," Peter replied, handing him the items before he sat down next to Will. "I don't think they realized I wasn't normal."

"Good." Jack nodded and turned his attention to the yellow rock and CD case in his hands. "Okay, I hope Felicia doesn't mind becoming an Arcanine. Can somebody hold this for a moment?"

Jean stepped up and took the rock off his hands while he reached for the minimized Pokéball in his pocket. There was a piercing scream, and Jack turned quickly around, his brain realizing belatedly that he had just given a Fire Stone to a half-Vulpix.

Her body had taken on an uneven sort of white glow, with her fully-Vulpix tails, hair and ears shining the way they ought to on an evolving Pokémon, but the rest of her either glowing sort of halfway or flickering disturbingly back and forth in intensity, like a failing lightbulb. Her six tails split into nine, her curled red hair straightened into a long, flowing mane, her ears became more perked and delicate, but at the same time her skull seemed to be trying to change shape, and her neck bulged out weirdly, and her legs and arms lengthened a little, and something horrible was happening to her eyes; the whole while she screamed in pain, her body stiffened by the horrors that were happening to it. Jack looked frantically for the Fire Stone, in some vague hope that he could remove it, but it had already turned a dull, grayish yellow in her hand, its power exhausted; there was nothing they could do.

"Jean! Are you okay?" Will shouted as the girl dropped down on all fours; the scream that followed sounded decidedly like a no. Then she cried out again, and it came out in an eerie howl as a tongue of flames spewed out of her mouth and narrowly missed Jack, who backed away in horror.

The glow faded completely from her body at last, but she didn't stop bawling and screaming breathlessly as she curled up on the ground. Will and Katherine ran up to her side as Jack stared at her, taking in the changes.

Well, she'd turned blonde. That in itself, combined with the straightening of the curls in both her hair and tails, made her look disturbingly unlike herself at a brief glance. The lengthening of her limbs had made her look several years older, though her proportions were odd and kind of disturbing; she looked too thin and her body too small in comparison, like a misshapen doll. Yellow-white fur, the same color as her hair, had grown into an uneven, messy collar around her neck. Her eyes had gone blood red, with the whites no longer visible. Primarily, though, her face had lengthened and her chin shrunk, giving her something almost like a muzzle but not quite, still too human to pass as Pokémonlike.

Everything about her was _wrong_, smack-dab in the middle of the Uncanny Valley. Jack cringed and looked away as her cries quieted into hysterical sobbing. Peter was still staring at her in disbelief. Only Mia was wearing the same expression as always.

"It... it h-hurts..." Jean moaned between shaky breaths.

"What hurts?" Katherine asked quickly.

"M-my _mouth_," Jean choked up and began to wail again. Of course, Jack thought distantly – even if evolution had activated the fire sac they'd always known she had, the inside of her mouth probably wasn't all that heat-resistant. That had to suck.

"I'm sorry," he said limply, not sure if it was loud enough for Jean to hear him. Handing her a Fire Stone. How could he be that stupid and careless at a time like this? (His mind also insisted on pointing out how stupid it was that she had actually accepted it, and really he'd just sort of held it out for anyone to take, and it was her fault if she took it anyway, right? Then again, he was also extremely tired after staying up all night, so perhaps it was no wonder he'd been a bit careless.)

Katherine, still kneeling by Jean's side, stroked her silky Ninetales mane gently in an attempt to comfort her, and suddenly the Roselia morph's expression changed. She closed her eyes, raised her face up towards the bright sunlight, and they all looked at her in puzzlement for a few seconds – all except Jean, who was still sniffling – before a strange, sweet, soothing smell wafted through the alley. It was incredibly pleasant and relaxing; Jack inhaled deeply and slowly realized he no longer felt tired. Jean sniffed and blinked.

"It feels better," she said weakly and sat shakily up, feeling her body up and down with her hands. Her expression turned horrified as she groped at her face, and when she stroked her hands along her hair and new tails, she began to cry again.

"What is it? Does it still hurt?" Will asked with concern.

"No," Jean said miserably, "but how can I be Sarah Hooter now? I look all wrong."

Nobody answered that. Katherine still looked kind of dazed after what had to have been an Aromatherapy attack; she blinked blankly, like she wasn't sure where she was. When Peter came over to his sister to ask quietly if she was all right, however, she nodded and seemed to be recovering.

"Look, Jean," Jack said, looking at her again, "nobody gives a fuck about Sarah Hooter right now, okay? Just... don't. We're trying to help Gabriel here and..."

"But I don't want to help Gabriel anymore!" Jean whined. "I want to go home!"

Jack really, really wanted to slap her, but the nagging knowledge that this was still his fault to at least some extent stopped him. "You can't go home," he said desperately. "We need Katherine with us, especially with Aromatherapy; she can't be driving you back and forth. And you could help too – even if it burns your mouth, fire would be _really_ useful, right? What if Katherine..."

"I don't want to!" Jean yelled shrilly; Jack looked quickly towards the alley exit to make sure nobody had heard all her incessant screaming and was coming to check on it, but they seemed to have chosen a location out of the way enough for nobody to be around.

"Well, all right, but if not, you can just stay in the car while we go in, or something. Either way you can't go home."

"I'll take a bus," she replied, sniffling.

"Oh, Christ, Jean, public transport?" Jack asked in frustration. "You've never used it before. There are all sorts of people on public transports and maybe one in five of them is okay with sharing a ride with a Pokémorph. There's just no way. Snap out of it and just come with us."

Jean pondered this for a moment; then, with a barely-visible nod, she muttered, "Okay."

Jack nodded emphatically in reply. "Great." There was a moment's pause. "So Peter, could you go get another Fire Stone?"

* * *

The good thing about churches, thought Jack, was that they didn't exactly sneak up on you; thanks to those convenient towers, you could always be sure where they were from a comfortable distance away. Even before they were two thirds down the directions they'd printed at his place, they could see the Church of Holy Truth looming ominously above the buildings around them.

"We probably shouldn't go too close," he told Katherine from the back seat. "They could be watching the roads leading up to the church."

She didn't answer. They'd all been a bit silent in the past minutes as it fully dawned on them just what they were doing. Jean still sniffled every now and then, fiddling with her pale, straight locks or shifting in discomfort as she tried to fit all her tails into the left-side seat. Will licked guiltily at his fingertips, squished between her and Peter, who kept turning his head anxiously towards Jack and back again with a jerky, birdlike motion. Katherine glanced in the rear view mirror so often it was a miracle she could pay attention to the road in front of her. The only one of them who wasn't shifty at all was Mia, ever silent and stoic in the passenger seat in front of Jack.

Katherine pulled into the next parking lot they noticed with a few free spaces and began to slowly make her way into a spot between two stationary cars, until there was an uncomfortable crunching sound as the side of their car squished into the corner of the one on the left.

"Oh, _shit_," Katherine hissed between her teeth and banged her rose-hands on the steering wheel in frustration. "What do we do now? I told you I couldn't do this."

Jack's heart sank horribly. "Try... try to get back?" he suggested weakly as his mind swirled with the fact he should have known something like this would probably happen when they had a completely inexperienced driver under great pressure trying to get around in the city; something had to go wrong somewhere.

Katherine did something, and there were more crunching noises. "I can't do this!" she repeated, her voice high-pitched and panicky as she lifted her hands completely from the steering wheel. "I'm just making it worse!"

"You'll have to do it somehow!" Jack replied desperately; the others were looking fearfully at him. "It's not like we can drive!"

"Turn it left," Mia said coolly. "Then back out. Don't hit the car on the right."

Katherine looked at her for a moment, still cringing and holding her hands away from the steering wheel as if they might do something on their own accord if they came too close to it. "Right," she squeaked, trying to slow her breathing, before she turned back towards the wheel. "Right. Okay, Mia. You probably know all about this. Gee, I wonder why you haven't just been driving instead of me the whole time."

Despite the sarcasm, she still followed Mia's advice and carefully turned the steering wheel left and switched to reverse. Very slowly, the car eased away from the other one; the front right corner fast approached the car on the right, but Katherine managed to stop and turn straight before anything happened on that side. After what seemed like absolute ages, they were a comfortable distance away from both cars again.

"And now I have to try it again," Katherine said with a nervous sigh. "That's going to end well."

Incredibly enough, it did; this time she came in at less of an angle and successfully got the car into place. There she switched to parking gear, put the handbrake on and finally shut off the engine with a turn of the key.

She slumped back in the seat and took a deep breath. "Okay. Uh, we should probably leave a note for the owner of the other car?" She looked around for a moment before opening the glove compartment. "Our parents are going to love this."

Jack looked guiltily at Peter, who was kind of pale but silent as his sister attempted to pick up some papers, had little success, and in frustration asked Mia to do it instead. The Scyther morph took them out and looked blankly at the damage report forms; Katherine looked over her shoulder at them, about as blankly, and finally said, "We'll get this stuff filled out later. Let's just leave a cellphone and license plate number before the owner of the car gets here."

Some part of Jack's mind was immediately convinced that judging from their luck so far, the owner of the car would probably get there just around the time they'd finished writing a note, but no, they managed to write down Katherine and Peter's dad's cellphone number and the license number of the car on a piece of paper and stick it under the wipers on their victim – thankfully or not-so-thankfully, their car looked considerably worse than the other one once they walked around it – before they made their way out of sight as quickly as they could while looking reasonably casual.

"Okay, uh," Jack began once they were a comfortable distance away from the parking lot, "well, you're not going to be waiting in the car, Jean, so I guess you can just wait someplace reasonably quiet around here?" He looked around; there was nowhere immediately obvious in the vicinity that wasn't uncomfortably public. "Or you could come in with us and try to help. That would be nice, too."

"No!" she answered immediately and looked unsurely around. "I'll... I'll walk to our place and just wait there."

"Your place?" Katherine asked hesitantly. "Well, it's a bit of a walk, but it's away from the church, and I guess you could avoid the larger streets." She looked at Jack with a shrug.

He sighed. "Okay. I guess that's the best option. Try to stay safe."

"I will." Jean smiled brightly. "Good luck!"

Well-intentioned as they were, her words only made Jack feel more nauseous. The others didn't respond very enthusiastically to it either, but at least they managed some sort of a brief goodbye before the now-Ninetales morph bounded off across the road and soon disappeared into a side street.

"I hope she'll be all right," Will muttered.

"I'm sure she will," Jack said with a lot more confidence than he felt. "Come on. Gabriel needs our help now."

* * *

"Okay," Gabriel said unconvincingly to himself, staring at the strewn sand and dirt on the floor beside him, "I could eat this as a fetus. I've got to be able to eat it now."

He had been locked inside a tiny, windowless, spectacularly dirty room in the church cellar, probably used to store visitors' shoes or something of the like, for what he estimated to be close to twenty-four hours now though that figure might have been exaggerated by boredom. And although he thankfully didn't need a lot of water to sustain himself, it took a lot of energy to maintain his unusual body temperature, and he was already feeling on the brink of starvation. He'd tried the whole banging-on-the-door thing already, but had soon come to the conclusion that there was simply nobody on the other side – not that his captors seemed likely to care very much about keeping him fed, anyway.

After giving up on that, he had looked around the room in exasperation and concluded for the umpteenth time that there was absolutely nothing in it except the thick layer of dust, sand and dirt on the floor. Then he had sat down, mostly because he was getting tired of pacing around and figured he could stay still for a while now before needing to warm up his skin again. And the floor had felt grainy beneath his fingers, which had made him remember some of what he knew about the circumstances of his creation.

So now, deliberately ignoring the glaring logical fallacy in his previous words, he squinted at the floor and stroked his hand carefully over it. The sand stuck to his gooey skin, leaving a visibly cleaner patch where he had wiped it. He turned his hand slowly around and dully watched the grains sink into the semi-transparent orange sludge on his palm. He shook his head; this was why he'd always had to eat everything with a fork or a spoon.

He looked around as if expecting to find a spoon magically lying around. Part of him wondered in morbid amusement whether he was really hungry enough yet for this to be worth it, but by now it was really less so much because he was hungry and more a means of finally letting his brain occupy itself with a task: _figure out some way to eat this sand_. It was oddly relieving after all the sleepless hours of having nothing to think about except guns being pressed against his head and whether he would ever get out of this alive.

After a bit of deliberation, Gabriel carefully removed his shirt and began to use a corner of the fabric, helped by the stiffer plastic coating on the inside, as a shovel. It took him at least ten minutes going around part of the room and trying to sweep the sand onto the shirt before he had gathered a satisfactory pile of dirt, and then he set it very carefully down on the floor and stared at it. He felt oddly like a drug addict confronted in a moment of clarity with the knowledge that his fix had spent unknown periods of time inside somebody's anus.

Again he wondered whether he was _really_ this hungry.

Then he decided that the longer he thought about it, the worse it would seem, and so he quickly grabbed the shirt and stuffed the pile of dirt into his mouth.

His gag reflex reacted immediately and violently. He coughed and spluttered, trying to clear the dirt from the inside of his mouth, but a lot of it remained stuck and gave him a terrifying feeling of suffocation. He desperately spat out a glob of grayish sludge, then half-vomited a bit more of it at the sight of what he'd just willingly attempted to eat, and finally lay there miserably for a few moments, feeling his muddy saliva dribble down his chin and blend with his skin, before he shakily pulled himself to his feet.

"Okay," he croaked to himself and coughed a few more times, "no way in hell am I trying that again."

He stood up, shaking a little, and wondered just how fetus-him had managed to feed on that.

In fact, he wondered just how he had eaten anything at all while he was a fetus. Fetuses weren't supposed to eat, were they? Technically, of course, he'd become self-sustaining even while he was still a fetus by human standards, but his mouth and digestive system were nothing like those of a Slugma.

There was something very important that he was forgetting. He closed his eyes and rubbed them, trying to concentrate on the memory of when he'd seen that brief news video about the Pokémorphs years ago. A small slimy blob squirming around in an incubator – an incubator full of sand. Dave explaining off-screen that he gained nourishment from the sand by…

He was an idiot.

Gabriel stroked his slimy hand again over the floor and then stared at his dirty palm. The sand and dust were again sinking ever-so-slowly into the orange goo. He stared at it for a long while, watching the already tiny grains shrink and eventually dissolve into nothing. He wasn't exactly surprised – this was, after all, why it wasn't a problem that it was impossible for him to bathe – but this was the first time he'd ever properly realized the significance of it.

Gabriel removed his jeans, cleaned out a corner of the room with his hands, piled his clothes there and lay down naked on the floor.

He squeezed his eyes and mouth shut and then rolled himself awkwardly across the room. He stood up and looked with satisfaction at the line of cleanness he had left on the floor – cleanness aside from the globs of slime, of course, but that was not important. He looked down at himself and the dirt covering his entire body and watched with a triumphant glee as it slowly just disappeared, leaving his slime back to its normal orange in a matter of minutes – in fact, he must have been imagining it, but somehow it seemed to have gotten a little lighter and glowier and warmer than before.

Gabriel began to press himself against the walls, too, gathering up the grime stuck on them, before he had an even crazier idea. Experimentally, he pushed his hands onto the bare wall, laying his weight against them. He waited still like that for several minutes, feeling his quickening heartbeat all the while, and then stepped away to find two shallow, hand-shaped depressions in the concrete, unmistakable even underneath the layer of slime.

He laughed uncontrollably, looking at his hands in disbelief; they were a little grayish, but even that was rapidly disappearing with a renewed vigor. He wasn't feeling one bit less hungry, in the way that he ordinarily understood the word – but as he pushed his entire body at the wall, he felt as if he were satiating some even greater hunger that he had gotten too used to to even notice. In fact, he was beginning to feel better and more energized overall than he had in years – and although it did alarm him somewhat that his skin really did seem to be getting hotter and hardening more quickly while his heart was beating as if it were about to explode, that feeling was too euphoric for him to stop.

For the first time in his life, he felt powerful. He felt fierce. He felt like a _Pokémon_.

* * *

Jean, in fact, hadn't gone home. She cringed at the very thought of being alone in their apartment now when she direly needed a hug and some pity. So instead, she'd just run over to the next bus stop she knew of and waited for a bus anyway.

The bus driver had a weird expression when she stepped in. She handed him the fare as quickly as she could and then walked shakily down the middle of the bus, uncomfortably aware of all the eyes on her. She didn't look like Sarah Hooter anymore. She just looked like a freak, and they all hated her.

She found an empty seat near the back of the bus and sat down in it, tucking her tails carefully away so they wouldn't get in people's way. At first she looked around, but they were all still staring, so she just looked down at her clenched fists and pretended she didn't see them. Her hands still felt weirdly far away, almost like puppets she was controlling from the end of a stick rather than parts of her body.

She twiddled her foot and it accidentally hit the seat in front of her; the old woman sitting there turned around with a scowl, and Jean looked back down, blushing. She tried not to move as the bus continued on its way, and she didn't look up until she heard a couple of teenage boys who were about to get off making a joke about how it was no wonder Sarah Hooter hadn't taken the Ultimate Fire Stone; she growled threateningly at them and they hurried out of the bus. Afterwards her throat burned, because there had been flames beginning to form, but she tried to cry as quietly as she could, and finally the bus stopped near where the Kerrigans lived, and she got off and ran all the way to the house as fast as she could.

She knocked on the door and her dad opened it, his expression lost and bewildered. "Jean?" he asked weakly. "Christ, what the hell happened to you?"

She was going to answer, but all that came out was a strangled sob, and she flung herself into his arms to cry on his shoulders. He was stunned momentarily but then pulled her inside and hastily closed the door. All their parents were standing around, looking exhausted and horrified.

"I'm glad you're okay," her father said quickly, hugging her. "Where are the others? Are they all right?"

It was a while before she could speak again. "I-I don't know," she said. "I left them after that Fire Stone evolv..." Her voice broke again.

"And they were all okay when you left?"

She nodded quickly and a wave of relieved tension and mutters of "Oh, thank God" travelled through the room.

"What did they do? What were they going to do?"

"T-they hadn't really done anything yet," Jean answered. "They were about to... to enter the church, but I... I wanted to go home."

"Shit," her father muttered, very quietly, but she heard him anyway. "Okay," he said, a little louder, releasing her so he could look her in the eyes, "so they're at the Church of Holy Truth, right? The one here in the city?"

Jean nodded.

"I'm going after them," said Martha Harrison immediately, her gaze steeled. "Who's going to lend me a car?"

"But... but then you'll be in danger," said Jean, looking at her.

"I don't care," Martha replied. "We're in danger here anyway. And now that I know where they are..."

"B-but it was a trap!" Jean exclaimed. "We figured it out – they _wanted_ us to come to rescue Gabriel, and that's why they didn't attack you, so you'll be okay if you stay here."

Everyone stared at her.

"Wait," her father said, squeezing the bridge of his nose, "are you telling me they figured out it's some sort of a trap... and then they _went there anyway_?"

Jean nodded. "They wanted to save Gabriel."

"Oh, for the love of..." He grabbed his hair with both hands. "_Shit_. Why do they all have such a fucking hero complex?"

Before anyone could reply, Lucy suddenly floated through the wall from the girls' room and looked at Jean. "They're waiting for them?" she asked. "They won't come here?"

Jean shook her head. "You're safe."

Lucy looked at her for a moment with her ghostly eyes. "I'm going to help them," she said, and without warning, she disappeared out through the front wall.

"Lucy!" called Howard, but she was already gone.

* * *

Peter walked innocently towards the Church of Holy Truth, concentrating fiercely on keeping his movements natural. He peered at the stained-glass windows, trying to see through them; the colored glass made it hard to see through into the darker building, and though he knew those inside would have a much easier time seeing into the sunlight, he also noticed those windows didn't appear to open. He didn't think these people would actually destroy the pretty glass windows of their church with bullets, even if they could avoid getting the glass all over themselves. They were probably safe until they were inside, then, but there was no real knowing. Maybe some of the windows could be opened. They could never be sure.

He glanced towards the streets where the others were coming through. He still wasn't sure it had been a good idea to temporarily split up, but it did make them harder targets and more difficult to spot than the rather glaring image of five kids and teens in conveniently concealing clothing all advancing towards a church together. Currently he was the closest to the building, which made him a bit nervous, but he tried to ignore it and headed in a beeline towards the door. Katherine wasn't far behind; being his big sister, she'd insisted on being close to him.

He quickened his pace a little, looking to the sides before he crossed the street – oh, crap, he'd just done a very conspicuous head-jerk, hadn't he? His heart raced as he tried to decide whether it would be better to run and possibly blow his cover if he hadn't already or to walk and remain easy to hit, but he'd started running before he'd come to a conclusion. In a sprint that may have been unconsciously assisted by a Quick Attack, he narrowly avoided getting hit by a bus, reached the door, turned the knob, opened it, went inside and slammed it behind him to catch his breath.

The clunk of the door echoed uncomfortably in the empty church. He flicked his gaze around in several quick jerks of his head, but found only the walls and windows, benches, an altar with some candles and crosses on it, normal church stuff like that. There was a small door at the back, but there didn't seem to be anybody in the nave. He took a few breaths to calm himself. He should just wait for the others now and then they could continue and look for Gabriel.

The door at the back flew open, breaking the silence again. A man half-jumped out and threw it shut again, and Peter realized with a chilling feeling of horror that he was holding a pistol.

The man's frantic eyes locked onto him, and he pointed the gun straight at Peter and fired.

* * *

Flames danced around Gabriel's hand, tickling him comfortably; it took only the slightest effort to maintain them. It seemed so natural and intuitive. It was almost bizarre to think that he couldn't do that yesterday. His heart thumped furiously. Every part of him felt hot.

He looked at the wooden door and wanted to smash it to pieces or disintegrate it in a blaze of glory, but common sense stopped him: if he did anything too noisy and obvious, he'd attract the attention of his captors immediately if they were anywhere nearby. So he settled for pressing his fiery hands onto the door near the lock and watching the wood blacken and crumble under his fingers.

The faint echo of a gunshot sounded somewhere above him.

* * *

The world slowed down. Peter watched wide-eyed as a bullet came flying in his direction; he desperately tried to jump to the side, and that was when he realized that _he_ wasn't slowed down at all.

He grinned as a second shot rang out and another bullet came flying; another Quick Attack allowed him to speed out of the way with no more effort than dodging a thrown softball. This was easy. They couldn't hurt him.

He skirted out of the way of the third bullet just as the door opened again.

"Peter?" asked Katherine in a high-pitched, panicked voice, and the gunman immediately turned towards her and pulled the trigger yet again.

She had no Quick Attack. All Peter could think of to help her was running into the path of the bullet as fast as he could.

He felt it pierce through his side, leaving a path of burning pain in its wake, but saw the man raising his gun again and raced towards him instead, trying to ignore the numbness spreading through the right side of his body. Before the man could pull the trigger, Peter had reached him and awkwardly tackled him down; the gun flew out of his hand, and Peter landed on top of him with a sharp sting of pain.

"Peter!" he hazily heard his sister screaming as she ran towards them, her footsteps echoing. The gunman pushed him off and stumbled towards where the gun was lying, but Katherine threw herself at him and tackled him down again. She shook her rose-hands desperately in his face as he tried to wrestle her away, and in a matter of seconds, his struggling stopped.

Katherine ran over to Peter as he lay on the church floor, groaning. He felt dizzy and weak; pain throbbed where the bullet had hit him, somewhere in the middle of a strange numbness.

"Oh, God," she said, pale and wide-eyed. "Are you... Peter, you can't just jump in front of..."

That was the last thing he heard before he blacked out.

Jack approached the front door with hurried steps. He glanced to the left, where Mia was creeping along the wall, her gaze fixed on him with something disturbingly like predatory hunger. He'd been close enough to hear the gunshots; he had to expect the worst. He shivered as he grabbed the doorknob and had to steel himself for a moment before he pushed it open.

Involuntary static electricity was beginning to build up in his antennae even before he took in the sight of the church: a man was lying motionless on the floor next to a gun, and up nearer to the altar, Peter was lying in a pool of blood, with Katherine kneeling over him. She looked sharply up as he let the door clunk shut; he hurried over to them, his heart thumping in his chest.

"I have to get him to a hospital," she said, her voice strained and hysterical. Jack stared at the wound and the blood, simultaneously fascinated and horrified.

"You call an ambulance," he said to Katherine. "Just tell them he's in here, and then we can continue looking for..."

"I'm staying with him," she said sharply. "We can't just leave him defenceless like this."

Everything was wrong. It wasn't supposed to go like this. "Look, Katherine," Jack said pleadingly, "we need you. You can't just..."

"I need to protect him," she replied, looking into his eyes; she was pale but her eyes shone with determination and he could tell nothing he could say would convince her. "It's our fault he got involved in this. We never should have come here in the first place."

The front door clunked shut and Jack looked around at it in alarm. Will was shuffling inside, panting. Mia seemed to have made her way inside earlier; she was watching them steadily from close to the entrance. As Will saw Peter lying on the ground, he froze, the tip of his tail twitching as he stared at the pool of blood spreading around him.

Jack looked back at Katherine. She'd taken out her cellphone to call an ambulance. As long as she didn't mention anything relating to Brian's murder or Gabriel's kidnapping, it should be okay even if the inevitable questions reached the police. Will was hurrying over, while Mia followed him nonchalantly, looking around.

"Is he going to be okay?" Will murmured as he knelt down by Jack's side. The Meowth morph averted his eyes from Peter's wound, instead staring at his face.

"Katherine's calling an ambulance, and they'll get him and it'll be fine," Jack replied insistently. Of course it would be fine. It had to be.

Will glanced at the sleeping man lying on the floor a bit further away. "So um... is that all? Aren't there more of them?"

Jack looked up. "More," he repeated, blinking; somehow the word didn't sink in immediately, but once it did, of course it struck him as odd. "Why aren't there more?"

"Must be lying in wait," Mia said. She'd reached them now; her eyes were still darting back and forth, taking in the room. "They probably want us to proceed further inside, where it'll be harder to run."

Jack's stomach lurched uncomfortably; the thought of being ambushed somewhere deep inside an unfamiliar building was chilling. He looked around and found the door in the back that Mia's gaze had also settled upon. "Well, we're not running, are we?" he said. "Let's go find Gabriel."

Mia simply nodded. Katherine gave him a meaningful glance: she'd be staying with her brother, no matter what he said. He looked at Will; the Meowth boy's tail was swishing restlessly back and forth as he glanced uncomfortably at Peter's unconscious form. He looked uncannily like a cornered kitten.

"You coming or not?"

Katherine was still on the phone, but she gave Jack a frantic glare and shook her head.

"I... I'm okay," Will muttered. "I want to help." He stood up, and as Mia led the way towards the back door, he followed uncertainly behind Jack as Katherine gestured wildly in their direction.

Mia stopped abruptly as they were about to reach the door. Jack held his breath as her eyes darted around.

"There's somebody breathing on the other side," she said.

Jack stared at her. "You sure?" he whispered.

She gave him a strange look. Of course she was sure. She never said anything she wasn't sure about.

"Um," Will asked quietly. "So what do we do then?"

They never had to answer, because now the door burst open and suddenly two men were standing there, aiming handguns at them.

Time slowed down to a crawl. A shot rang out and Will started to crumple to the ground just as Jack instinctively threw himself down; he could feel the air displacement in the wake of the second shot just above him. Energy automatically flared up in his antennae as Mia emerged from behind the door, and somehow, he simply knew what to do: he focused for a fraction of a second as one of the men was starting to lower his gun down towards him, and suddenly a burst of electricity hit the man.

The victim let out a strangled sound as his muscles contracted involuntarily; his finger squeezed the trigger automatically, and Jack felt horrible, searing pain in his right leg. The other man, momentarily distracted by his partner's fate, screamed when Mia slashed at his forearm, and the gun flew out of his hand; she grabbed his bloodied arm and with a disturbing strength managed to swing him headfirst into the wall. After a long moment, she released him and he fell, unmoving.

The one Jack had Thunder Waved was lying helpless on the ground, locked in a foetal position and groaning in pain. Jack tried to stand up but couldn't even begin to try to put weight on his shot leg. Now that the brief adrenaline rush of the fight was dying down, the pain was coming back with a vengeance, intensifying with every heartbeat. He shakily managed to drag himself over to the wall, roll over onto his back and sit up.

"Mia," he said and looked over at her, realizing with a jolt of horror that she'd laid out the unconscious man on the ground and was staring as if mesmerized at his pulsing jugular, her scythed arm hovering dangerously close. "Mia!" he said, louder, and she turned her head towards him. He saw her eyes flick over to his bleeding leg and stay there. "Don't get carried away, just..."

She stood up, and he grimaced in pain and closed his eyes, trying to wish it away. He heard Katherine approaching hurriedly and kneeling down somewhere near him. "Can somebody, um... do something about my guy before the paralysis wears off?" he managed to say, but there was no response.

Jack opened his eyes again, and as he found Katherine, his gaze fell on Will, who was lying sprawled on the church floor next to her with a pool of blood spreading from his head.

He felt dizzy all of a sudden. Will. He'd completely forgotten about him in the heat of the moment, and there he was, his large eyes empty and staring. Jack had the time to make out an entry wound just beside the charm on his forehead before he forced himself to look away, frantically refusing to assess the damage otherwise. Will had to be okay somehow. The image of him curled up in his sleeping bag and purring with a contented smile on his face just last night hovered in Jack's head, clashing violently with the horrifying, dull stare of the present. He couldn't just be gone.

Katherine turned sharply towards him, tears of anger streaming down her cheeks. She choked on whatever words she meant to say, but he knew what she was thinking. It was his fault. Of course it was.

Searing pain throbbed in his leg. He dimly heard several loud thumps as Mia presumably introduced the paralyzed guy's head to a wall on the other side of the door. Katherine was right; they never should have come there. And after what happened to Peter, why had he brought Will into danger as well?

Off where he was lying, Peter let out a groan, having seemingly regained consciousness, and Katherine immediately hurried over to him. Jack was left alone with Will and his empty stare.

He cringed and looked away, and suddenly he remembered Felicia. He somehow managed to dig into his pocket for the Pokéball before he crawled through the doorway. "Mia," he said hoarsely. "We just... we have to find Gabriel and get out of..."

Mia wasn't paying attention to him. She was staring at something that looked like a broom cupboard by the wall on the right, which she suddenly almost leapt towards and wrenched the door open.

A scrawny guy with wide, haunted eyes half-fell out of it with a frightened yelp, managing just barely to keep his balance and point the gun he was holding at Mia with a trembling hand. She was ready before he fired it and jumped to the side, grabbed the gun arm and used it as leverage to move up behind him while he fired useless shots into thin air.

As he struggled and screamed, she swung her other arm around and slit his throat with its blade. Blood sprayed out as the man continued feebly to fight back against her, but she held him still until his body went limp.

Jack stared in frozen horror at the dead man and at the psychotic grin breaking out on Mia's face as she gazed at the blood dripping from her scythe, and it surprised him as much as her when yet another gunshot rang out, her head jerked, and she collapsed on top of her prey, her eyes rolled back in her head.

A tall, dark-haired man with piercing, icy blue eyes stood in front of another open door at the back of the room, his gun still raised, and chuckled. He looked at Jack, but the gun remained steadily pointed at Mia's body as he walked slowly closer and fired two more shots at the back of her head.

Jack threw Felicia's Pokéball forward with the little strength he had just as the man pointed the gun towards him. "Use Fire Blast!" he shouted in panic.

The Pokéball's white sendout light burst forth, illuminating the room as it took the shape of the enormous Pokémon, and the moment the light began to fade, the man simply emptied the clip into the Arcanine's head.

Jack stared in horror, splattered with hot Fire-type blood. Felicia's body collapsed in front of him. The man was already reloading his gun with quick, practiced motions. Jack tried feebly to crawl back towards the wall as he raised the weapon yet again with a satisfied grin.

"Freeze!" came Katherine's voice from the doorway, high-pitched and panicky. She was holding one of the other men's discarded guns and pointing it shakily at Jack's attacker. "You – you drop the gun, or I'll shoot!"

The man didn't drop the gun. He just swung his arm towards her instead, there was yet another gunshot and a scream, and Katherine hit the floor with a thump.

The killer chuckled softly. "Stupid girl."

Jack wanted to shout something defiant and angry as the man looked back at him, but all that came out was a frightened whimper. There was no one left to save him now.

The man grinned manically and pointed the gun at him, and he braced himself for a swift death.

A jet of flame suddenly rushed into the room from behind the gunman, and he whirled around to shoot in its direction, but the fire enveloped him completely before he could. The gun dropped from his hand; he staggered backwards, but the fire followed him mercilessly, and Jack's heart jumped when he realized that the source of the flames was Gabriel, his skin glowing a bright orange as flames streamed from his outstretched hand.

The man backed up against the wall, and Gabriel continued to advance towards him, glancing worriedly at Jack. As Mia's murderer burned to death, he laughed madly among the flames, never screaming or crying; Gabriel continued to scorch his body with a shaking hand until he was finally silent and unmoving.

"Jack," he said weakly as the flames died down and he hurried towards his friend. "Are you all right?" He knelt down by Jack's side, looking at the bloodsoaked leg of his jeans and then at the room. "I... is that... Felicia?"

"I'm sorry," Jack whispered. "It's all my fault."

"It's okay," Gabriel murmured, still staring frozenly at the body of the Arcanine.

"Are... are you okay?" Jack was shaking. His brain felt frozen and numb.

"Me?" Gabriel smiled faintly for a moment. "Never better."

Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped limply down across Jack's lap.

"Gabriel?" Jack shook him frantically, but the Slugma morph didn't wake up. "Oh, no. Gabriel, you can't die. We all came... we all came to save you and... Will, he... everyone... oh, God, please. It's all my fault. Please don't die."

He was starting to sob uncontrollably, his hands still buried in the uncomfortably hot slime of Gabriel's back. His leg burned with pain; part of Gabriel had landed on top of it and the liquid skin was pressing into the wound. Some part of him registered in puzzlement that Gabriel was naked. What had they done to him? Why was he dying? How had he escaped? When had he learned to use fire?

There was a groan near the door he'd come in through, and he looked frantically towards it. The first man that Mia had knocked out had regained consciousness where he was lying and was reaching for the gun he'd dropped.

"No," he said hoarsely as the man gripped the weapon and turned his head towards them with difficulty. "Please. We didn't do anything to you. Please don't."

The man's eyes flicked towards the bodies of the two men they had killed and pointed the gun towards Jack with a shaky hand, his expression showing only pure terror.

He was knocked back by an orb of purple energy as the dark shape of a little girl emerged through the wall beside Jack. She levitated to the middle of the room, forming another Shadow Ball between her small hands as her ghostly hair fluttered in a nonexistent wind and her hypnotic eyes watched the man carefully.

"Lucy!" Jack choked out in relief before he realized that the Misdreavus morph had noticed her sister's body lying there on the floor.

Lucy let out a bone-chilling wail as her eyes took on a blood red glow. The man she'd attacked frantically grabbed the opportunity to shoot at her, but the bullets went through her like smoke, eliciting no reaction as she floated up straight above him and hurled the second ball of energy down at him. He screamed as it hit, but it was drowned out by Lucy's own scream that quickly transformed into an eerie melody of concentrated agony.

The world became pain; Jack dimly heard himself begin to scream as well as the excruciating notes dug into every fiber of his being, and then everything went black.

* * *

Author's note: No, Lucy did not just kill everybody; Perish Song induces unconsciousness, not death. Obviously you will find this out in the next chapter, but until that's written, I'd rather not have people think rocks fell and everyone died.


	14. Chapter 14

Jack regained consciousness in a bed. His leg stung faintly, but not quite painfully.

His eyes snapped open as soon as everything that had happened came back to him. His parents were sitting by the side of the bed in quiet conversation, and that combined with the smell told him he was in a hospital.

"Gabriel," he said quickly, or rather that was what he tried, but it came out mumbled and drowsy. "Where's Gabriel?"

His parents looked up and were suddenly hugging him. He noticed properly now that his leg was in a cast, raised above the bed. "Is Gabriel okay?" he asked, his voice sounding a bit clearer than before.

"They don't know yet," his father said quietly, rising again. "His body temperature was far too high. Some of his internal organs may be permanently damaged."

"What about the others?"

"Peter and Katherine are both alive and recovering – she might lose some strength in her arm, but they're out of immediate danger. They say it's a miracle, probably some of it thanks to the Pokémon DNA."

Jack's heart sank as his father hesitated. "So Will and Mia and Felicia...?"

His father shook his head slowly. He wasn't sure why that little shake horrified him so much, after he'd known it already; really, with Peter and Katherine all right, it was much better than he'd dared to hope. But somehow, the confirmation that they were gone, dead, forever – it was suffocating. He wanted to say something but had no idea what; he swallowed, looking at his father.

His mother rose as well and looked at him. "What were you _thinking_?" she whispered, sounding less angry than just puzzled. Jack couldn't answer her: he really didn't know anymore what he'd been thinking. All the planning and excitement – that strange excitement over wandering into an obvious deathtrap – seemed faraway and bizarre, like waking up from a vivid, seemingly realistic dream only to then realize that it was nonsense from beginning to end.

"Gabriel has to be okay," he managed to choke up at last. "He has to be, or they all... it was all..."

"You should rest," his father murmured. "We'll wake you if we hear anything."

* * *

The man chuckled, his stinging icy blue eyes focused on Jack as he raised his gun, except that Jack was actually Gabriel; the man began to burst into spontaneous flames and screamed in agony as he burned, but then all of a sudden Mia grabbed him from behind, scythed arm shining by his throat, and said, "Hey, Jack."

His eyes flicked open and he wondered momentarily in a panic why everything was white all of a sudden; then he heard his name again, and as he looked frantically around, he realized hazily that he was still in his hospital bed – and it was Gabriel that was saying his name in the bed next to his.

"Gabriel?" he managed after blinking and shaking off some of the sleepy mist in his head."You're all right?"

Gabriel nodded; he looked tired but satisfied. He was propped up against the pillows, a crude transparent plastic sheet protecting the bed from his slime. It still looked brighter and somehow healthier than usual.

"Could you leave us for a moment?" Gabriel said after a second's hesitation, looking at Jack's parents, who were still sitting near his bed. They glanced at one another, then at Jack with concern, but finally stood up and left the room.

"Thanks for coming for me," the Slugma morph said with a faint smile as the door closed. "Maybe I shouldn't be thankful you did something like that, but I am, so shoot me."

Jack couldn't possibly find that funny considering the circumstances; Gabriel's smile faded again and he looked away.

"What a joke," Jack said after a moment, staring out the window on his side of the room. "I was so desperate to save you I dragged everyone else into it too, and in the end, you were the one that saved me and they suffered for it. Near as I can tell, you could've gotten out by yourself without anyone getting hurt."

"But you didn't know that," Gabriel said, looking back at him. "It was brave – stupid, but brave."

He knew Gabriel meant well, but hearing it called brave made Jack nauseous. He thought of Will, of his wide, staring, dead eyes, and realized with a knot in his stomach that the only time he would ever see him again would be in a coffin. He remembered Brian's funeral, the crushing, suffocating atmosphere and the mildly sickening feeling of looking at him lying there and realizing Brian wasn't actually _there_ anymore. And when he thought of Felicia – Christ, she was just a _dog_ – tears angrily started to burst out at the corners of his eyes. He looked away and tried to hold it in; God, he was so _stupid_. He'd told them all that everything would be okay, so fervently he had almost believed it himself, and now they were dead, all for nothing – it wasn't brave. It was stupid and pointless and wrong.

There was a lengthy silence.

"I thought you didn't have any Slugma powers," Jack said after a while, without looking at him.

"That's what I thought, too," Gabriel replied. "But it seems my Slugma cells were just starving to death."

Jack turned towards him and blinked.

"True story," Gabriel went on. "My skin eats rocks. I haven't been rolling around in sand much lately, so it wasn't feeling too good. Then I got locked up in a really dirty room with bare concrete walls and no food, and it turns out I have badass fire abilities after all."

Jack looked incredulously at him.

"_Then_ it turns out if I actually use my powers, my body temperature rises and my human organs start failing. So I'm back to sucking at life. Figures."

There was another long silence.

"I don't understand how you can be so cheerful about this," Jack blurted out all of a sudden, looking back at him. "Hasn't anybody told you that Will _died_? And Mia, and poor Felicia?"

Gabriel's expression quickly sobered. He was silent for a while, and for a moment Jack was terrified that he honestly hadn't known.

"Yeah, that's kinda fucked up," Gabriel replied eventually. "I know what happened, and it's terrible, but I can't get myself to feel like I did when Dad died. Heck, I killed a man in there. And I know I should be traumatized and never recover or something, but I'm not. I feel pretty good about it. Hell, I feel _awesome_. I can burn people! How cool is _that_?"

Jack felt sick; he looked away.

"You know," Gabriel said hesitantly after a moment, his tone uncertain, "I thought this was what you meant when you talked about feeling violent and wanting to beat people up, show them you're better than them, or whatever."

Something stung in Jack's chest as he recalled that conversation. "I don't feel like that _now_," he mumbled, feeling kind of terrible for ever having thought that way. And yet, in a way it had been exciting being about to walk into that church, and just earlier he'd wanted to punch Gabriel a little, but that was just being angry, wasn't it?

Gabriel looked contemplatively at the ceiling for a few long moments without saying anything. Then he said, "Maybe it's just that I won, and you lost."

There it was again, that inexplicable feeling, that longing to show him that no, Jack didn't lose, he wouldn't lose in a fair fight, and as soon as his leg was out of that cast he could –

Jack cringed; Gabriel was looking at him, and he could tell that somehow, the other boy understood.

"I guess Pokémon feel like this all the time," Jack said quietly.

"No wonder they love battling so much. One mystery explained for the ages, thanks to us."

They looked at one another, and for a precious moment, Jack managed to forget all about the horror in the church and winning and losing and just be glad to have his best friend back, alive and well. Then the image of dead Will assaulted him again, and he turned back towards the window.

"You know, I think we're all pretty fucked up in the head, one way or another," Gabriel said after a while. "Mia was just the only one that didn't hide it."

Jack nodded silently. They had to be: why else would they have gone along with him?

* * *

_'POKÉMORPH' TRAGEDY AT CHURCH OF HOLY TRUTH_

_Yesterday, six of the human-Pokémon hybrids created by Heywood Labs in the fall of 2000 staged an assault on a Grace City church, the Church of Holy Truth._

_The church had formerly been involved with protests against the creation of the so-called 'Pokémorphs', calling them 'abominations'. The attack occurred after extremist members of the congregation had kidnapped a seventh Pokémorph, Gabriel Edwards, and held him inside the building._

_During the attack, the Pokémorphs physically assaulted five men, killing two while another two have been hospitalized with severe concussions. In self-defense, the men shot and killed two of the Pokémorphs and an Arcanine, as well as causing minor injuries to three of the other Pokémorphs._

_The reasons for the kidnapping are unknown. Investigation is still underway._

"Self-defense," muttered Dave, putting down the newspaper. "What a load of horse shit."

"What is it, Dad?" asked Jean as she spread butter on her toast.

"Nothing," he replied, scratching frustratedly at his scalp. "Just the media being a bunch of biased hacks as usual."

She nodded sagely, like she understood exactly what he meant. He picked up his cup of morning coffee and took a sip as he flipped through the rest of the paper with his other hand. He considered whether to read the in-depth article, but it would probably only piss him off more. Most of the time that wouldn't have stopped him, really, but for the moment pissed off was just not what he wanted to feel. This was, in all likelihood, the calm before the shitstorm, the short period of mostly-ordinary life before the outraged public would swallow them whole. Ten years ago, he'd spent that calm being pissed off anyway. By now he could only be grateful there was a calm between shitstorms at all.

His phone started to ring, and he jumped, struck in a split second with a flash of memory, the smooth voice of the psychopath as he announced that they had Gabriel. He dug it from his pocket and answered it.

"Yes?"

_"David Ambrose?"_

"Speaking."

_"This is your daughter's agency. Sorry to intrude, but we could not help but hear some, ah, rumours about the events of yesterday – is it true that she has... 'evolved'?"_

His hand tensed around the phone. "She may or she may not. What about it?"

_"Well, we just wanted to confirm that you were aware that her acting contract for the Sarah Hooter film series includes a clause stating that should she become unsuitable for her role due to injuries or other unexpected physical changes, she would lose the right to the role of..."_

He stopped listening somewhere in the middle of the sentence. "What? Really?" It had been obvious from the beginning, of course, but he'd had enough else to think about. "So she can't have the role anymore?"

_"We're very sorry, but the contract..."_

"Are you kidding? That's the best news I've heard in months."

There was a beat of silence on the other end. _"Well, then, Mr. Ambrose, we hope you understand."_

"Absolutely. Thanks."

_"Goodbye."_

He hung up. Jean looked questioningly up at him; he took a deep breath.

"Okay, Jean, remember the Sarah Hooter movie?"

She nodded warily.

"Well, turns out they're prejudiced pricks who don't want you anymore because you look different now."

She took it surprisingly well, truly – her eyes began to well up with tears, but he'd expected a tantrum the size of a freight train at the very least. "But, Jean," he added anyway, "if they don't want you, they're not worth it. There are a lot of people who think you guys are pretty freaky, but you're better than all of them put together, okay?"

She sniffled and nodded. Then, after a pause, she looked up and asked hopefully, "Can I torch them?"

Shit. "Ah," he replied, scratching the back of his neck, "torching might not be such a good idea after all. You, uh, you saw – you heard what happened to..."

"Will," she finished quietly, looking back down at the table. There was silence; she poked listlessly at her toast. He looked at her, unsure what to say. She hadn't known Brian that well and hadn't been particularly bothered by his murder; there hadn't been a lot of explaining or comforting to do then.

"I'm glad you came back, Jean," he ended up saying.

"Was it stupid to go?" she asked, looking up at him with a worried earnestness.

"Stupid?" He considered it. "Not exactly. You were just trying to be heroes. Thing is, the heroes you read about in books aren't real. There's always a writer watching over them and making sure they win out in the end and the bad guys get caught. In the real world, we aren't that lucky. There's nobody watching over us, and the bad guys win all the time. You could all have died and the universe wouldn't care. That's why you have to be careful and you can't play heroes – because the universe doesn't care, but the people you know care and they're going to be heartbroken if something happens to you." He paused to breathe, rather pleased with himself for the spontaneous life lesson. "Promise you'll never do anything like that ever again, all right?"

Jean nodded wordlessly.

"Good." He sighed. "Too bad it's too late to tell that to Will and Mia."

Unexpectedly, that sentence left a lump in his throat, and it refused to go away, so he didn't say anything else and turned back to his newspaper.

"Dad?"

"Mm?" He took a sip of his coffee. It was getting cold.

"Do you miss Mia?"

He looked up, forgetting the cup halfway down to the table. "What?"

"I mean," Jean went on, hesitantly, "I was friends with Will, and you were friends with Mia, right?"

"Friends?" He put the cup down, looking back at the paper. "I wouldn't say friends."

"Oh." Jean paused, looking at him with those new red eyes of hers that he was still getting used to; they always gave him the strangest feeling she was reading his mind. "She didn't really have any other friends, though. I think she really liked being with you."

"Maybe." He picked up the coffee again. Why were newspaper crosswords so fucking indecipherable?

"I think maybe she..."

Dave put the cup down, more harshly than he intended. "Goddamn it, Jean, she's dead. There's no point talking about her friends or lack thereof anymore. Just give it a rest. Christ."

Jean closed her mouth and looked down at the table.

"And she was a fucking sociopath anyway. Odds are she wouldn't understand the word 'friendship' if you gave her a goddamn dictionary to look it up in."

Jean nodded vaguely without looking up.

Dave rose and put the empty coffee cup in the sink before rubbing his eyes. Calm before the shitstorm. Try not to spend it being pissed off or taking it out on her. God knew she'd been through enough in the past couple of days. "Sorry, Jean. I'm in a bad mood."

"It's okay, Dad," she said with a sudden cheerfulness, like nothing had happened at all, and he took a moment to marvel at her ability to change her mood in less time than it took to blink. Did Vulpix even do that? Sometimes he wondered if she was just faking it to cope.

"Oh!" she exclaimed suddenly. "The Pichu Brothers are on TV!" And then she grabbed his hand and began to drag him over to the living room.

"Yeah." He sighed. "Cartoons. Sounds good."

* * *

The funerals were simple and quiet, except for the protesters. Some were probably from the Church of Holy Truth; others held signs saying MURDERERS or DETAIN THE POKÉMORPHS. The police kept them at bay, but Cheryl couldn't help getting the feeling that was not the only reason they were there.

Will got a few powerful eulogies of his own. He'd been a sweet, adorable kid, after all – anyone would put in a good word for him now that he was gone. But Mia... people exchanged awkward glances when Cheryl attempted to sort through what good could be said about her, knowing everyone who was listening had heard the rumours, that the Scyther morph's last act in life had been cold-blooded murder.

It crossed her mind, many times, that they were all probably kind of relieved Mia was dead. It crossed her mind, too, that as much as she had tried to understand her, treat her as a person and act like she was just different rather than disturbed, some part of her was a little relieved as well.

Then, after she stepped down, Dave delivered a passionate speech that somehow managed to make the half-Scyther sound merely eccentric and unreasonably persecuted, and though it reeked of half-truths and was a little awkward to listen to, she somehow really appreciated it.

Lucy had been silent ever since the incident. She just watched, her eerie red-and-yellow eyes hypnotic and somehow accusatory, as the coffin was lowered into the grave, and spent the rest of the day standing around dully, only communicating in more haunting stares at anyone who tried to get her to talk. Even while concerned about her, Cheryl felt some irrational envy at the fact she could feel such unconditional love for her sister, without a trace of the fear and alarm that tainted her own feelings.

Perhaps it was just the Misdreavus girl's innocence and naivety. Or perhaps she just had nothing to fear. After all, she had terrifying power, possibly _more_ terrifying than Mia's had ever been – she just acted more normal about it.

That night, as they were watching television in the living room, she tried to hug the girl, but she had made herself insubstantial and showed no reaction to the gesture at all.

"Lucy," she murmured, "even though Mia is gone, we have to move on. You can't refuse to talk forever."

Lucy's gaze locked onto her, and Cheryl found herself unable to look away – actually, physically unable. There was a resentful coldness in the girl's ghostly eyes, and Cheryl's mind was suddenly assaulted with flashes of raw emotions: pain, injustice, hatred, a disturbing longing to _hurt_. Then it was gone, so quickly she almost thought she might have imagined it.

She could move again; she pulled away, shivering, and averted her eyes from her daughter for the rest of the evening.

She considered mentioning it to Howard that night, but didn't.

* * *

Jack looked at Dave, then at the other morphs' clueless faces, and then at their parents standing near the hospital wall, looking grave. "So what is this about?" he asked, his throat dry. If they were all here, it couldn't be good.

"Well," Dave began. "The _good_ news is that you're all legally juveniles and employed force only after provocation. Lawyer thinks he can get you off completely in court, Pokémorphs or not."

They looked at one another, waiting for the continuation.

"On the other hand, a committee is being put together to establish a ruling on whether you're 'dangerous nonhumans' and what should be done about it."

Jack stared at him, his stomach twisting itself into a knot.

"Thing is, there was a precautionary law put in place before you were born to ensure that if you turned out psychotic or otherwise apparently a danger to society, they'd have a solid basis on which to put you all away. I managed to talk our way out of it when Mia just scratched some guy, but it's kind of hard to do the same when two people are dead, no matter how justified. So there's a committee, there are going to be special hearings, and depending on the outcome you could all get institutionalized, or forced hormone treatments, or whatever those bozos think up."

"What?" Gabriel asked in disbelief. "_All_ of us?"

"The fuck do you think they understand about genetics?" Dave replied irritably. "As far as they're concerned you're all the same thing armed with different ways to kill people. It might have been easier to convince them you're okay if it were just Mia, but you guys weren't exactly Gandhi in there either. Burnt corpses tend to leave something of an impression on people."

Gabriel glanced uncomfortably around at the others. After his victorious euphoria had worn off and his skin had returned to more or less its former condition, he'd been considerably less enthusiastic about that particular part of the events at the church, but Jack supposed Dave would never let that stop him from rubbing it in.

"So is there nothing we can do?" Katherine asked hesitantly.

"Well, odds are they'll call at least some of you in for a hearing. Some of us, too. Only thing to do is to act normal, tell them something that sounds good and hope to earn enough sympathy for them to miraculously decide to let you off."

Jack's heart sank, but the feeling was dulled with familiarity; by now it was just a faint little sting, and he couldn't help thinking, the idea somehow horrifying him, the day would come that he would stop feeling it at all.

* * *

"Mr. Ambrose, what is your connection with the Pokémorphs?"

"I made... had a part in making them. I'm also the father of Jean Ambrose, the Vulpix Pokémorph."

"What was your experience of their characters before this incident?"

Dave sighed. "They're great. Wonderful people. Wouldn't harm a fly, except I guess Mia."

"And what made you think that?"

"Same thing that makes you trust anyone else you know." He paused. "Some of them are a little eccentric, okay. We didn't touch anything we thought was connected to personality or behaviour, but genes are complicated and there's always something. But when you talk to them and spend time with them, they're human and normal. They have normal hobbies and normal interests and talk about normal things, for the most part. They have a normal understanding of what's good and evil. There's nothing unstable or dangerous about any of them, except maybe Mia but she's not the issue here."

"We trust you are aware of the circumstances of Isaac Daniels' death...?"

Did they think he was a fucking idiot? "That was self-defense. The man had just kidnapped and threatened him and shot at least two of his friends, and he was aiming the gun at a third – he'd just shot his _dog_, for Christ's sake. Did you expect him to stand around and watch? Nobody would stand around and watch. Nobody _should_ stand around and watch when you could be stopping a psycho from murdering someone in cold blood. I don't see why you're even bringing that up."

"There is testimony to the effect that Gabriel Edwards continued to deploy fire for an extended period of time until it proved lethal." Fuck, who told them that? Jack?

"Look, he was in shock and scared for his life. Why would he be thinking of trying not to kill the guy? Roasting him until he stops moving makes sense to me, when it's a psychopath who'd kill you if you took your eyes off him."

The committee looked down at him with irritatingly neutral expressions. "Do you believe the Pokémorphs did the right thing, Mr. Ambrose?"

"No," he replied patiently. "But imagine being in their shoes. All your life you've been reading Sarah Hooter books and having it ground into your head that kid heroes can go up against dangerous criminals and win. And sure, you realize that kids aren't solving crimes and saving lives left and right in real life, but things are going to get a lot fuzzier in your head when you actually have superpowers. Combine it with the adults in your life being unable to do a thing to save your friend whereas you think you can? _Your_ kids would've done the same thing. They didn't go in there wanting to kill anyone, for Christ's sake – they just wanted to save Gabriel's life. And if it turns out they need to Flamethrower the ringleader behind the kidnapping in the process, they're going to do it – because they _have_ to, not because they have a genetic predisposition towards murder."

Clackity-clack went the typist as he caught his breath. _Yeah, write that down,_ he thought. _That needs to be on the record._

The head of the committee cleared his throat. "What about Mia Kerrigan's attacks on her schoolmates and subsequent murder of..."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," he blurted out before he could stop himself, "she's irrelevant. Yeah, she was a little screwed up, I admit, but she got three bullets through her brain and the rest of them aren't half Scyther, if you haven't noticed. Plus those kids at her school kept provoking her."

There were a few tense moments of silence.

"So are you of the opinion that the Pokémorphs should walk free?"

"Of course I am. They're not animals to be kept in cages. They're smart, nice, well-raised human kids who look at a little different. That's all."

The members of the committee wrote something down, impassively, neutrally, as if this was an issue with multiple valid sides to consider instead of a matter of basic, supposedly inalienable human rights. Fucking bureaucrats.

The man in the center finally looked up. "Thank you, Mr. Ambrose. That will be all."

That was it. All he would get to say before they took them all away. He wanted, burningly, to make a glorious exit, to tell those committee shitfaces exactly what he thought of them, but bit back the urge, for the sake of the morphs. It would only hurt their already hopeless case.

They were all basically his kids, for fuck's sake.

With a deep breath, he stood up, nodded vaguely to the committee and turned towards the exit.

* * *

It wasn't as bad as Gabriel had thought, honestly. Restrained from society at large sounded bad, but they tended not to be around society at large much, anyway. He'd miss the comic book store, but most of his and Jack's friends' parents had already voiced their full permission for their kids to continue to visit if it came to that, and there were always computers – hell, video chats, even – to keep in touch with Ben. The morphs had always spent a lot of time at home, and they'd still be able to see each other if they were driven between places during the night. And though the warning signs posted around their homes made him cringe, there was a strange sense of relief in never having to see that repulsed look on people's faces or those nervous sideways glances again.

Which wasn't to say everyone agreed. Dave, for one, thought it was a travesty of justice. But after spending what felt like years thinking he might live out the rest of his life in solitary confinement, punctuated with a gripping, irrational fear that somehow the 'Put the Pokémorphs Down' group would get their way after all, it felt downright liberating.

(He'd had nightmares about being strapped down on a table, with faceless figures in black suits giving him injections, then woken up paralyzed and convinced that his breathing was slowing down. By now he wasn't sure any realistic result would've disappointed him, really.)

The night before the law was to formally take effect, he snuck out to see the town properly with his own eyes for probably the last time. The streets were empty in the harsh light of the streetlamps. Everything was silent, in that beautiful, calming way rather than the heavy, unsettling way. He walked around rather aimlessly, turning at random; there wasn't anywhere in particular he wanted to see so much as just taking in the neighbourhood. He didn't know it that well; he'd lived in a different part of town with his dad.

Eventually he wandered into a nearby playground. For a moment he looked at the deserted swings and slide and was a little sad he'd never see little kids playing in them again. Then it hit him that every time he actually had, the kids would notice him and scream or run to their parents.

Really, wasn't he a lot better off just enjoying the world through photos and movies, where he could pretend his presence didn't just fuck everything up?

He sat down on the edge of the sandbox and sighed, laying his hand on the nearest mound of sand. Almost immediately he felt warmth trickle up his arm; he shivered. It felt nice, satisfying.

And, against the doctors' advice, he couldn't resist burying his other hand in the sand as well.

He felt his skin heat up as a sensation of power spread through his body. He removed his hands quickly and stood up, feeling a little lightheaded.

His left hand swept across the air, flames sprouting in its wake. It took only a moment of concentration to send a long tongue of fire into the air from his right hand. The sheer destructive force he _knew_ he had was incomparably thrilling.

He thought back to Isaac Daniels' charred body, felt powerful and victorious, and then sat back down, shuddering and a little horrified at himself. It took a while for his high to wear off before he felt safe around his own thoughts again.

Maybe it was really for the best to keep them away from society.

* * *

_What if?_

That question haunted Katherine, never leaving her alone for very long at a time. She'd grown pretty used to it, but it didn't stop pounding in her brain, and she wasn't sure it ever would.

Peter was still just a kid. To him, it had just been a mistake – one that very nearly cost him his life, maybe, but he was still at that carefree stage of life where he could look at it afterwards and think of it as an adventure, to some extent. Will's death affected him, but there was a certain disconnect between it and the rescue mission in his mind.

Katherine couldn't do that. She was the fastest-growing morph, for all intents and purposes in her late teens. They were kids and wouldn't know better, but _she_ should have known better – she _had_ known better, but she'd gone and given in to Jack anyway for some reason she couldn't even begin to comprehend now.

She should've been more responsible.

Again and again, her mind imagined what might have happened if she'd simply refused to go. Would Jack ever actually have taken the car? Surely not. And then Gabriel would have discovered his powers and escaped on his own, and made his way home, and they'd have called the police, and everything would have been okay. She clung to this fantasy, imagining it vividly again and again and wishing desperately that she could will it into existence or rewind time.

But with every new time she imagined it, there was more time to rewind. The tangibility of the fantasy was slowly fading away, replaced with a cheesy fairy-tale-like glamour. It was silly and still she couldn't stop thinking about it: _what if?_

She sighed wearily, turning her swivel chair away from her desk. There was an essay she was supposed to turn in by mail, but she couldn't focus on it. She let her pencil drop and shook her arm; her right shoulder stung with phantom pain. Maybe she'd been lucky to be left-handed, after all. It would have sucked if she'd been shot in her good arm.

There was a sudden knock on her door. She looked up to find Peter opening the door carefully.

"What is it?" she asked.

Peter shrugged nervously, stepping inside. "Just wanted to talk, I guess."

She turned her chair towards him, and he took that as an invitation to sit down on her bed. Her brother hesitated once there, looking around; his neck moved in small, birdlike jerks, indicating he was either nervous or just not trying.

"They're..." he said after a moment, "they're not going to let me continue my Pokémon journey next year, are they?"

"No," she replied flatly. "You can't be around normal people ever again, unless they choose to come to you."

He contemplated that for a few seconds. "If they come to me? So technically... I could be a Gym leader?"

She stared at him, and he tilted his head questioningly, like a pigeon. "Somehow I think parents would have a problem with that," she said, raising her eyebrows.

He paused again, thinking. "But what if there's a barrier and a remote-controlled Pokéball thrower, so that we can have the Pokémon battle but I wouldn't really be able to go near the challengers?"

She couldn't help it; something about it just cracked her up. He didn't take offense to it, she hoped.

"I haven't seen you laugh in a while, Kathy," he said, conversationally, when she'd stopped giggling.

"There hasn't exactly been much to laugh about, has there?" she said dryly.

Peter shrugged, looking out the window. It was gray and rainy, but knowing him, he probably still wished he was outside. _That_ was certainly going to get a lot harder for him now.

"You know, maybe you can be a Gym leader one day," Katherine said after a moment. "Crazier things have happened."

He smiled a little. "You don't have to say that. Thanks, though."

She looked at him, and he looked back at her, thinking. "How's your arm?" he asked.

"Better, I think," she said. She wasn't sure it was better at all, or would ever be better, but there was no reason to worry him. He'd suffered enough because of her thoughtlessness.

Peter was looking longingly out the window again now; he sighed. "What are we going to do?" he asked, jerking his head back to her.

What _were_ they going to do? What sort of half-life could they have, confined outside society forever? In theory they could have jobs if they could do the work at home – school still worked, just about – but what employer would hire them?

She looked at her brother. "We're going to live," she said. "Somehow. And maybe the law gets repealed sometime in the future and we can pretend to be normal again. Until then, all there is to do is survive and make the best of it even if it sucks. That's what we've always done."

Peter nodded silently, looking at the window again.

"You can probably be outside if you stay within the fence," Katherine said eventually. "It's not like anybody's going to be there. Just ask Mom and Dad first."

His face lit up. "You think so?"

"Sure. Just be glad we don't live in the city."

"Maybe I can even train my Pokémon," Peter said excitedly, standing up and taking a step towards the door.

Suddenly he hesitated and turned back to her. "Are you going to be okay?"

"I've got roses for hands, Pete. I would've had a crappy life anyway."

He gave her a skewed smile in response and then left the room. She heard the echo of his footsteps through the closed door.

Yeah. Her life would've been shit anyway. This probably didn't change that much for her, aside from definitively ruling out those violin lessons, but really, who had she ever thought she was kidding with that?

She just wasn't so sure about the others.

* * *

Jack stared at the sidewalk below, hands clenched around the railing.

He'd always had those little flashes of morbid thoughts. When he handled a knife, for instance, he'd briefly imagine slitting his own throat with it, or even stabbing someone else. It wasn't anything he would ever act on; it just came up as a dramatic hypothetical, and usually it would make him shudder and then cut his toast and forget about it. It was the same with high places: he'd look down and some part of him would think, _what if I jumped?_ It would just never have crossed his mind to take it seriously.

Until now.

He was on the balcony of their apartment, looking down. It was oddly thrilling, just standing there contemplating what it would feel like to fall from this height. He imagined the momentary rush of air and the sudden sharp shock at the end. He imagined looking down at his own body, lying in a heap on the pavement, blood dripping from his fractured skull. It didn't make him shudder this time; in fact, the thought was strangely appealing.

Slowly, trancelike, he climbed onto the bottom part of the balcony railing. His stomach fluttered and he closed his eyes; the breeze tickled his skin as the handrail swayed ever so slightly under his weight, fragile. He imagined it breaking, tumbling down and taking him with it. Again, the thought was more fascinating than disturbing.

Some desperate instinct was starting to warn him off, that no, no, this was a _stupid_ thing to do, stupid and selfish and pointless – but its objections seemed flat and feeble. He swung his leg over the railing and stepped down on the outside of it instead. His other leg followed, and he turned carefully around to face outwards, his hands wrapped around the handrail as tightly as he could. That wasn't very tightly; his fingers were still webbed and weak, after all.

He looked down, feeling his heart thumping. Again there was that indescribable thrill of being so tantalizingly close to falling: he imagined leaning forward until his hands were too weak to hold him up anymore, or just letting go and closing his eyes and going limp. It was so easy. It would be easy. Why wouldn't it be?

He thought he heard something, but it barely registered in his mind. He closed his eyes and took deep, shuddering breaths. The cold wind ruffled his hair. It felt nice, peaceful. And wasn't that how everyone wanted to go?

"Jack?" he heard Gabriel say from inside the apartment.

His eyes flew open. _Jump,_ said his mind urgently; _jump, before he sees you and stops you._

He heard Gabriel's footsteps approaching the living room. _It's the only way. You have to. Jump!_

It was too late. "Jack!" Gabriel screamed behind him. He tried to let go, but the hypnotic thrill of the idea was gone; suddenly the cold was biting and the height was terrifying. Gabriel rushed out onto the balcony, and he felt the Slugma morph's slimy hands grab onto his arm, tightly. For some stupid reason he started to sob.

"Jack, for God's sake, get back over here right now." Gabriel's voice was trembling. Jack took a few shaky breaths, his eyes closed. He imagined wrestling away from him and throwing himself down anyway. He imagined pulling Gabriel down with him, the Slugma boy's eyes widening in fear as they plummeted towards the ground.

That was the thought that finally made his heart lurch in his chest, gave him that shuddery wake-up call. His stomach roiled as he looked down, and against his mind's screams of protest, he started to turn around. His legs were like jelly; it struck him that without Gabriel to support him, he'd probably fall anyway. He tried to climb back onto the balcony, but he was too weak, and Gabriel had to half-lift him over the railing; then the Slugma morph dragged him inside and closed the door.

"What..." Gabriel began, as Jack collapsed on the sofa, shaking. The Slugma boy's yellow eyes were wide, his expression concerned and alarmed. "What the hell, Jack?"

"You don't understand," Jack said, his voice cracked, looking down. "It's all my fault, first Will and Mia and Felicia and now this house arrest th..."

"I don't understand?" Gabriel interrupted, abruptly pulling him to his feet by the arm and forcing him to look at him. "Jack, I looked a man in the eye and burned him to death!"

Jack fell silent, a little puzzled by the remark, staring at his friend; there was a weird, desperate intensity in his eyes.

"Listen to me," Gabriel went on, calmer but still urgent, not letting go of his arm. "Terrible mistakes aren't fixed by making more terrible mistakes. And sometimes you don't really want to go on living, but then you try to fix your life so that it's worth living. You don't just..."

His voice died down for a moment. "For God's sake," he started again, "what if I hadn't been here to stop you?"

And then, suddenly, Gabriel pulled him into a hug. Jack was too stunned to react at first; then all he could think of doing was hugging him back as he broke into stupid, involuntary sobs again.

It was a few seconds before Gabriel relaxed his grip on him, stepped back and looked away. "I'm... I'm sorry," Jack choked out. "It was just..." He shifted. "How can I have the _right_ to just go on living like nothing ever happened, when they died because of me?"

"Well, you have to," Gabriel said, jerking his head back towards him. "The last thing we need is more tragedy. It wasn't your fault; it was the shooters' fault. And even if it were your fault, it wouldn't stop being it if you killed yourself. A murderer who dies is just a dead murderer. Death doesn't _fix_ things. It doesn't work that way."

Jack took a deep breath and sank back into the sofa. After a moment, Gabriel sat down beside him. They stared at the blank screen of the television.

"How do you deal with it?" Jack said quietly. "Having killed someone, I mean?"

Gabriel didn't answer for several seconds. Jack looked at him.

"He killed my dad," Gabriel said at last. "He killed Felicia. He shot Katherine. He tried to kill you. The guy who killed Will probably did it on his orders. He was a monster and he deserved it."

Jack shuddered inwardly, guilt stinging at him: Will wasn't a monster; he shouldn't be dead. There was no justification for...

"But you know what?" Gabriel went on suddenly. "I didn't even know who he was when I did it. I knew he was trying to kill you, and that was why I attacked him, but I don't think that's why I kept going until he was dead. I was _enjoying_ it. And I wish that was because he killed my dad, but it wasn't." His voice was starting to break. "God, I'm so _confused_ right now."

He paused a moment, but then all of a sudden looked desperately at Jack. "You know, maybe I'm a monster too. But _you_ aren't a monster. You were just trying to help me, and it wasn't your fault things turned out how they did. And yet here you are trying to kill yourself, and all I can think is, if _you_ think you deserve to die, what the fuck am I still doing here?"

Gabriel looked away and fell silent. Jack stared at him for a few seconds, his brain frozen, thoughts jumbled, unsure what to say.

"Thanks for saving me," he said eventually, quietly, looking back at the TV. "Both times. I'm sorry you had to do it again."

Gabriel was still looking in the other direction; he shifted but didn't respond. After a moment, Jack added, "I don't think you're a monster. You just did it to help me. That's all."

The Slugma boy turned around, his face doubtful. For a couple of seconds he just looked miserably at Jack; then his expression hardened and he said, "Yeah. I guess that was all."

Jack dared to smile, tentatively; a wave of relief passed through him when Gabriel actually smiled back.

"Please don't try that again," Gabriel said quietly, and suddenly it struck Jack that the Slugma morph had already lost his father and Will and Felicia; to make him lose his best friend too was downright cruel, wasn't it?

He shook his head. "I won't. You're right. It won't fix anything."

Gabriel smiled again, forcedly; then he suddenly stood up. "Want to play some _Blood Sport III_?"

The suggestion was a little suspiciously overeager, but Jack was grateful for it anyway. "Sure."

After about a dozen rounds of brutally beating up various characters and adamantly pretending Gabriel wasn't losing on purpose, Jack was actually beginning to feel almost okay.

* * *

Dave opened a new can of beer and took a good swig of it before putting it down on the table and throwing himself into the sofa with a sigh.

Permanently grounded. What sort of a fucking life were they supposed to have after this? And yet people kept insisting it was pretty lucky because they could _theoretically_ work and get education and see friends.

He drank a little more. To think that ten years ago making Pokémorphs had just seemed like an amusing idea. He'd been at that party, just drunk enough, and suddenly it had hit him – the way Pokémon and human genomes could be viably combined, even for wildly different species. It was a stroke of true genius, probably the greatest scientific insight of his life, and of course he'd had to do something with it. How could he not? Even Howard had been excited about it, and when was he ever excited?

Originally it had just been a proof of concept thing. He'd been sure it would work, but they'd had to silence the inevitable sceptics before the publication of their discovery would put them in the spotlight. Or something. It had seemed to make sense at the time. They'd all been well aware of the risks, of course; so aware of everything that was not quite legal or ethical about the creation of the embryos that it had never even crossed their minds that somebody would have a problem with the _abortion_.

_That_ was the problem. The creation was already done; there was nothing to do about that after it got out. Keeping them alive was ridiculous, but it was the one thing that could be done to please _somebody_ in the midst of all the general outrage.

He'd never wanted to have kids. At the time he'd actually thought that was the worst thing ever to happen to him. He chuckled mirthlessly at the thought before picking up his beer again and taking another long sip.

And then the morphs had grown up and he'd come to realize that they were the most fucking amazing kids in the history of the universe.

Oh, sure, people loved to pat themselves on the back saying everyone's special. But Mia was fucking _unique_. There would never again be anyone like her. Vanilla humans were all identical fucking twins in comparison, and yet everyone, even Howard and even _Cheryl_ – Christ, he'd thought she was better than that – stood around talking about Mia's death as if nothing of value had been lost. And they mourned Will like he was just another sweet little bullied kid, too. It was fucking tragic.

He thought about the little rips and scratches covering the sides of the passenger seat of his car, and about Will beaming as he showed him how he could use Pay Day, and about buying hotdogs and arguing with the principal, and about Joe's idiot kids he knew had treated their half-Meowth brother like shit all his life – all his measly fucking ten years of life –

– and this, he thought, emptying the beer can before squeezing it so hard it crumpled under his fingers, was why God didn't exist: because a _real_ creator would love his creations too fucking much to leave them to die in a world like this under the pretense of free will.

He tossed the can away as hard as he could. It hit the wall with a clatter, then bounced a few times off the floor before coming to a standstill. He looked at it for a few seconds and then, stupidly, he broke into uncontrollable sobs.

What the fuck.

He turned to face towards the back of the couch, waiting for it to pass, despising that his body thought that was going to fucking help. It was a couple of minutes before he'd gotten it under control.

"Dad?"

He sprang up in alarm only to find Jean standing by the couch in her pyjamas, looking concerned. He blinked and rubbed his face. Had she been watching him cry? "Shit, Jean," he mumbled. "What are you doing up?"

"Um..." she said hesitantly, "I heard a noise so I came to check what it was."

The can, he realized. "Oh," he said, slumping back down on the sofa. "Sorry I woke you."

Jean looked up at him. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"Why were you crying?"

Oh, Christ. "It was nothing. Go back to bed."

She gave him a sceptical look, red eyes piercing accusingly into his. "You don't cry when it's nothing."

He blinked. "Well," he said after a pause, "I was angry with the bastards that killed Will and Mia."

He walked over to the fridge, glancing at Jean as he took out a second can of beer and opened it. She watched him as he walked back over to the couch, taking a sip.

"And the committee that's having you locked up like animals," he went on, "and all the self-proclaimed Pokémorph supporters who think that was a pretty cool compromise."

As he sat down again, she nodded, very slightly. It made him feel better, in some bullshit psychological Asch-experiment way.

"And Brian," he went on without really meaning to after chugging down a bit more. "They shot Brian through the fucking heart, just because he had the audacity to be standing behind me. What the hell are you supposed to do in a world like that?"

Jean looked at him for a few seconds, her eyes sad and lonely and inhuman. Fuck, he wished he could just _help_ her, help all of them. But there wasn't any help to give. All there was to do was make some shitty attempt to be a father and try to hold a fucking beach umbrella over their heads when the world sent tsunamis their way.

"Jean," he said, raising the can to his lips once more, "I'm sorry you have to live on this shithole of a planet."

And then suddenly she sat down beside him, wrapped her arms around him and whispered, "It's going to be okay, Dad."

He blinked; it was almost like she was trying to reassure _him_ instead of the other way around. It wasn't supposed to be that way. Was she worrying about him on top of everything else?

He felt her starting to sniffle into his shoulder. "Yeah," he said numbly. "Everything probably is going to be okay."

But that didn't make her better, it seemed; she was shaking with sobs now, squeezing him tightly. He had no idea what to say.

"It'll probably be overruled," he managed eventually. "They'll probably realize their mistake and give you all free rein again." He paused; she was still weeping quietly.

"The church'll be disbanded," he went on. "Everyone will realize you're just people like them. You can walk out in the streets all alone and people'll just nod and smile. You'll grow up and get jobs and have a great life. And..." And they'd take Will and Mia to a fucking Pokémon Center, and they'd get revived by a machine that goes bing, and everyone would live happily ever after. Wouldn't that be nice?

At least Jean had stopped sniffling now.

"You should go back to bed," he murmured. She shifted, nodding, and then stood up.

"Good night, Dad," she said quietly.

"Sleep tight, sweetie." He put his beer down on the table and watched her close the door.

Happily ever after. Yeah, wouldn't that be fucking nice?

It was a good thing Jean couldn't hear him cry through her door.

* * *

**Author's note:** So that's it. _Morphic_ is done. I'm saying this because I realize it doesn't feel much like a traditional end and if I didn't state it explicitly I would undoubtedly get a slew of confused comments asking when it's going to be updated.

That said, this fic is no exception to my compulsive rewriting syndrome, so you haven't seen the last of it. A whole lot of things especially in the earlier chapters bug me, particularly because for a while my conception of the plot was limited to 'there are Pokémorphs and religious fanatics try to kill them' (and later to 'religious fanatics eventually kidnap Gabriel for some reason and the others try to save him'). The first half of the fic just goes into slice-of-life introducing all sorts of stuff that never gets picked up on (the kids calling Mia possessed at school especially come to mind) with one random exaggeratedly evil villain-POV. I like to think that a rewrite could be a lot more focused, what with me actually knowing what the plot is like from the beginning. Which isn't to say it would do away with the slice-of-life aspect – it would just try to make it feel like the fic is actually going somewhere interesting with all this and have a clearer idea of what's relevant and what isn't.

This prospective rewrite also means that your comments would absolutely not be wasted just because the story is already over. If something in any chapter is ridiculous or makes no sense or contradicts something else or whatever, now is the perfect time to point it out to make sure I'll do something about it in the rewrite. So get criticizing, everyone! I will greatly appreciate every nitpick, provided it's a valid objective complaint (as opposed to a plea to add a Mewtwo morph or to make the ending happy).

I also _might_ (that's a big _might_) possibly do a sequel at some point in the future, but please don't get your hopes up; my ideas for it at the moment are extremely vague and have a ways to go before they start to make any real sense, if ever.

**Addendum:** This chapter is now followed by a couple of extras, if you didn't notice. But the actual fic is still over.


	15. Dave and Mia Discuss Sex

**Author's Note:** Okay, so. This is the first in a series of silly extras about Dave and Mia talking about random stuff that have been on my website for a while; the others will be posted on FFN over the coming days. It's not precisely part of the actual fic and takes place sometime prior to chapter five, but it makes no sense (and is probably disturbing as all hell) without the familiarity with the characters that comes with having read the entirety of the actual fic, so it would be pretty hopeless to post it as a standalone.

Don't take this too seriously. It was written purely as an excuse to write more about the two of them, because I love their interactions and could happily spend the rest of my life just writing about them having bizarre conversations. The quality of the narrative kind of reflects this.

* * *

"Have you had sex?" she said, completely out of the blue.

"What?" Dave automatically looked at Mia for a split second before forcing his eyes back towards the road. "Of course. Why?"

She shrugged. "You don't have any biological children."

"Well, no, but that's thanks to contraceptives, not –" He gave her a glance again. "They're not teaching you abstinence-only at school, are they?"

She shook her head.

"Well, that's good. Then you know that contraceptives can do wonderful things."

"How old were you?"

"What?"

"The first time."

He gave her a doubtful look. "Uh. Fifteen, but…" He stopped at a red light. "What's with the sudden interest?"

She shrugged. "We had sex ed today. It sounds interesting. I think I'd like to try it sometime."

She was looking at him the way she did when she wanted advice. He raised his eyebrows. "Eh. That's a bit of a complicated subject, but, uh…" He scratched at the back of his neck awkwardly; the light went green, and he tried to think while accelerating. "First of all, the point of sex is to have it with somebody else. Do you… do you like men or women?"

There was a momentary pause. "Men."

"Well, okay. Then you find some guy you like, and… are you looking for commitment or just a…"

"I like you."

He looked sharply in her direction; she was wearing the exact same neutral expression as usual. "…What? No, Mia, that's – no, that's not how it works. Christ. You find somebody your own age – mental age – like one of the guys in your class at school, or something."

"I don't like them."

There was silence. "Well, you shouldn't be having sex now anyway," he said after a moment. "Technically you're ten years old. It's illegal."

She nodded contemplatively.

"Also, it's a different kind of like. Guys you like sexually are not the same as people you just generally like. It's a different feeling. You don't like me _that_ way. Or at least I hope not."

She cocked her head. "Why?"

"Oh, Jesus, Mia." He scratched at his neck again. "Because that would be fucking creepy, that's why."

Mia shrugged, looking casually out the other window. Several seconds passed. Then, "I don't get it."

"What part of 'fucking creepy' do you not –"

"The different kind of like."

"Oh, that." He paused. "Uh. Well, it's when you can't stop thinking about someone. Or you look at someone and… you just want to keep looking at them. Or you want to touch them, or do things to…" He shook his head. "Jesus Christ, why are we having this conversation? You should ask your mom."

She looked at him for a while. "You like her that way," she then said, conversationally.

He gave her a sharp glance; his fingers tightened on the steering wheel. "Why would you think that?"

"You keep asking about her when you come over," Mia said. "You look at her a lot, differently than you look at other people. Just now you thought of her when you were talking about liking people."

He ruffled his hair. "Oh, Jesus, Mia," he muttered, "you're something else, you know that?"

She looked at him for a second. "You had sex. With her."

He jerked his head towards her; the car veered and he only barely managed to pull it back on track. "What the fuck. How do you even… what?" She opened her mouth. "No, on second thought, don't answer that. I don't think I want to know. What the ever-loving _fuck_."

A second passed as he stared determinedly at the road ahead. "You did," she insisted.

He decided not to dignify that with an answer. She didn't seem to mind; she just looked out the window, apparently unaware she'd said anything particularly significant.

"Hey, uh," he began after a moment, "don't be mentioning this crazy theory of yours to your dad, all right?"

She shrugged. "Okay."

"Great. Thanks."

A minute passed in silence.

"I don't think I like anyone like that," Mia said eventually.

"That's fine too. Maybe there'll be someone later. Or you're asexual. Wouldn't surprise me."

She paused. "Asexual is when you don't have sex with anyone?"

"Because you're not attracted to anyone, yeah."

"What if I wasn't attracted to anyone but wanted to have sex anyway?"

"Well, then you'd do that and stop trying to apply labels to yourself – but not now, because you're ten years old and any sex you have right now is legally statutory rape."

She nodded.

"I can't get pregnant," she observed after a moment.

"You're infertile, yeah. But you could probably get STDs, so for the love of God use condoms. Or rather, use condoms there far in the future when you're not _ten fucking years old_."

There was a lengthy pause. "When is it legal?" she asked.

"The age of consent is sixteen over here. Other countries are different."

"You said you were fifteen."

"Uh." He drove on a moment. "Nobody takes these things _that_ seriously. Point is, ten's creepy no matter who you ask, your mileage may vary on whether looking and acting older actually helps with that, the law tends to be firmly on the 'no' side, and though I wouldn't personally report a guy you had consensual sex with there are definitely people who would."

She contemplated that. "There's plenty of time," she said eventually. "I'd just like to try it _sometime_."

"That's the spirit. No need to rush it."

He stopped the car in front of the Kerrigans' house. "One more thing," he said as Mia unfastened her seatbelt and opened the door. "Most people are going to be a wee bit freaked out if you suddenly start asking them odd questions about their sex life. Don't walk in there asking your parents when they lost their virginities. It'll be awkward."

"Okay," Mia replied before she stepped out of the car. She hesitated for a moment there and then said, "Thank you."

Mia really, _really_ didn't say 'Thank you' often.

He didn't get a chance to reply before she'd slammed the door and headed off to the house, but as he drove off he felt oddly proud.


	16. Dave and Mia Discuss Politics

**Author's Note:** This is a silly extra, not precisely a part of the actual fic (see the author's note on the previous 'chapter'). It takes place at some point prior to chapter seven. Don't take it too seriously.

* * *

"All voted," said Dave as he got back into the car. "Sorry for making you wait. Hotdogs?"

"That would be nice," Mia said.

He shut the door and started the car, calculating the best route to their favorite hotdog stand. He knew Mia usually wasn't bothered by waiting and didn't exactly need it made up for with bribery, but he'd come to enjoy these trips more than he liked to admit, and she didn't usually see too much interaction with people besides her sister. It was probably healthy for her to have adult conversations every now and then.

Such as now, when she broke the silence with, "I don't get voting."

"Well, they count together all the votes, and whoever has the most votes gets to govern the country. That way, the largest possible number of people get to have their way and be happy. Democracy in a nutshell."

"But most people are nuts."

She was looking at him in perfect seriousness; he started to chuckle a little. "That's true. Problem is, the nuts are equally convinced that we're the nuts. There's no objective nut-scale to decide whose opinion should count."

"Of course there is," Mia said, her usual neutral tone leaning a little towards puzzled and frustrated, like it was obvious. "IQ tests."

He raised his eyebrows, amused. "To be fair, IQ tests aren't the most objective science out there. They give wildly different…"

"So make them take many," she said, still in the same tone of voice. "Average the result over enough different tests to be statistically significant. It's _science_."

He laughed; she didn't appear to see the humour in it. "Well, that'd be one unpopular decision. Politicians never make unpopular decisions, unless the alternative would make them even more unpopular. That's just how politics works."

She nodded reluctantly and looked out the window on her side for a while. "It's stupid that it works that way," she said eventually, turning back towards him. "The system should be changed."

"And how do you propose we do that?"

She shrugged. "I could kill the government," she suggested after a moment.

He would have done a spit-take, if he'd been drinking anything. As it was it just came out as a choked snort of disbelief.

"You should be president," she went on. "You'd have the final say on everything. There would stop being elections, and you'd just appoint somebody sensible to replace you before you die. If somebody doesn't like it, I can threaten them."

He couldn't help grinning. "That would make me a dictator, not a president."

"Okay. That, then."

He looked at her. She still looked perfectly serious. "Well, I'm flattered you think I'd make a good one, but dictatorships don't really fly in this day and age."

She turned towards the window again. "That's too bad."

"And, uh," he began after a short pause. "Neither does the systematic murder of the government. Besides, all the important ones have bodyguards. You'd get shot before you got anywhere close."

Mia looked back at him.

"And if you did systematically murder the government, you wouldn't be the one picking the new one. In fact, you'd be put in a maximum-security prison while people campaigned to have the death penalty reinstated just for you. So don't go trying that."

She nodded. There was silence.

"Now," he went on after a little while, "if you want to have a say in politics, you can vote when you're eighteen."

"What's the point?" she said. "Most people are nuts. They'll still be nuts if I vote. It won't make a difference."

"Well, if everyone thought like that, nobody would vote at all, would they?"

There was a pause. "That would be nice," she said. "Then I could go and cast the only vote."

He didn't reply immediately. "Well," he answered at last, "that's kind of defeating the point. The idea is _everyone_ gets to vote and have an equal say, regardless of sex, race, religion, sexual orientation, social standing, education –"

"But that's _stupid_," she said. "People who believe in things there's no evidence for, or can't do simple sums in their heads, or think we didn't really land on the moon, shouldn't have a say in anything important."

He racked his brain for a counterargument she would understand. "Thing is, Mia," he said eventually, "the moment you give any excuse for discrimination, on any basis, you're opening windows for other discrimination, and the first people who are going to get discriminated against are Pokémorphs. If you took the vote away from individuals with a lower IQ, or members of organized religion, or everyone who's ever failed a math test, they're going to take it from you as well. It's not a very long path of inference from 'people must be smart to vote' to 'people must be _human_ to vote'."

She shrugged. "That's okay. Eight votes wouldn't make a difference anyway. It'd be worth it for the greater good."

He raised his eyebrows as he pulled the car to a stop at a light. The thing about debating with Mia was that sometimes her handicap made it actually _hard_. Usually, people with her kind of utter immunity to the trump cards of most rational discourse – human rights, justice, equality and so on – were also incoherent lunatics who wouldn't recognize a sound argument if it hit them in the face. Mia could hold an actual line of reasoning in her own little bizarroverse. In a way, it made it interesting.

"See," he said after thinking a little, "people can revolt if they're unhappy, even if they're religious or stupid or conspiracy theorists. If the majority of _everyone_ has their way, there will be fewer people who are unhappy and can revolt than there are people who are happy and would oppose the revolution, creating more stability. But if only some people get to vote, the conclusion might only represent a minority and the unhappy majority will be able to revolt. Dictatorships are even more vulnerable because then, in theory, absolutely everyone except the dictator could be unhappy. With democracy where everyone can vote, revolutions are unlikely."

Mia listened with interest. "So democracy is because the government doesn't want there to be revolutions."

"In a sense, yeah." He paused. "I mean, you can lose subsequent elections, but it's a relatively small loss. You've lost money on the campaign, but you went into it knowing that risk, and you might win again next time."

"Whereas if you were a dictator and there was a revolution, you'd probably be killed."

"Basically, yes."

She nodded, looking satisfied.

"Or tortured," she added after a second. "If they hated you enough, they'd want to listen to you scream."

"Uh," he replied, glancing at her. "Yeah, I suppose."

Her expression had turned distant as she stared out the window, pupils wider than usual, mouth in something resembling a contented smile. He tried not to wonder exactly what she was imagining as he prepared to park opposite the hotdog stand.


	17. Dave and Mia Discuss Horror

**Author's Note:** This is a silly extra, not precisely a part of the actual fic (see the author's note on 'Dave and Mia Discuss Sex'). It takes place at some point prior to chapter seven. Don't take it too seriously.

* * *

"So, Mia," Dave said as he started the car, "how'd you like the movie?"

She thought for a moment. "I liked the bit where the guy had to cut his eye out."

He snorted. "You would."

"Also with the Houndoom killing the woman. That was nice."

He winced a little. "That was pretty brutal, yeah." He paused. "How about the Scyther bits? I've got to admit that was why I took you."

"No," she said. "That was lame. It was all CGI."

He raised his eyebrows. "Well, that's obviously necessary if you're going to have a person cut in half." He paused until it struck him that maybe she didn't find that obvious at all. "You know, because otherwise they couldn't get any actors for the part," he added. "It's all special effects. Nobody would want to be in the movie if they had to be actually gutted for it."

She nodded, looking out the passenger side window. "That's too bad." After a moment she turned back to him. "But a real person being cut in half wouldn't look like that. It was stupid."

"I don't think a lot of people know or want to know what a real person being cut in half would actually look like, Mia."

She shrugged. "I could tell it looked wrong."

"Well, there's a career for you. Gorn movie special effects. I'm sure you'd be great."

Mia's lips curled into a grin as she looked out the windshield. Dave fleetingly wondered if, with time, her social skills and understanding of human ethics might actually improve to the point that she would be able to get and hold a regular job. Probably not very likely. He'd sometimes toyed with the idea of trying to get her into programming – provided she could keep her mind on it, he imagined her bizarre hyperlogical brain would probably be good at it – and seeing if she could earn some money off freelance work online for people who had no idea who or what she was. But that was a question for the future.

"I didn't like the main character," Mia said after a while. "He kept doing things that made no sense."

"Oh?" Well, he supposed experiencing mental anguish over being forced to watch one's family tortured and slaughtered would probably never make sense to her. "Like what?" he asked anyway.

"Like when he started stabbing himself with his pocket knife. It was painful and he could have died."

Dave looked at her. It was funny how, after all these years of knowing she had no sense of humour whatsoever, he still always kept checking if she was joking. "I'm, ah, pretty sure that was the idea," he said eventually.

"Why would he want to be in pain?"

"He didn't want to be in pain. He wanted to be _dead_."

"That doesn't make sense. You can't want to be dead."

"Yes, you can," he said patiently. "He was living out the most fucked-up horror scenario the scriptwriter could stuff into one film, and he'd rather die than experience that because he's a normal human being. Just because you wouldn't want to be dead doesn't mean –"

"That makes no sense," Mia repeated. "You can't _want_ to be dead. Wanting something means you'd be happy if it happened, but if you're dead you don't exist so you can't be happy about it."

He thought about it in silence for a few seconds. It occurred to him that he was sitting in his car arguing for the merits of suicide with a ten-year-old girl. That was a little fucked up.

"Maybe he was religious," Mia suggested after a while. "Then he could have thought he'd be happy after he died."

"It's not that," Dave replied with a wave of his hand, trying to get his thoughts in order. "If I were him and honestly thought killing myself would just put me into some cheery blissful afterlife while everybody I cared about got tortured to death, I'd…" He trailed off. "Well, point is, that'd be a fucking nightmare. Meanwhile, not existing means you don't have to spend an eternity living with the memory of it anymore, and yeah, there's definitely a sense in which you might want that."

"But that doesn't change that it happened," Mia said.

"No, but because you'd be dead, you wouldn't care anymore. Dead people are selfish pricks that way."

"Dead people _don't exist_."

"That was a joke. Jesus."

There was silence.

"So you'd try to kill yourself if that happened to you?" Mia asked after a while, tilting her head.

He winced. "Uh. Yeah, I guess. Seems less painful than the alternative, in any case."

She considered it. "But he was just in pain. He didn't even die."

"Well," Dave said, "for my parts, I'd try to stick the knife somewhere fatal. That's where the guy in the movie went wrong."

Mia nodded slowly. "So it was because he was bad at anatomy."

He paused. "In a sense, I guess you could say that."

She was looking thoughtfully at him now. "What if you didn't have a knife?"

"Oh, Jesus." He scratched at his hair. "I don't know. I mean, what would _you_ do? How the fuck are you supposed to know what you'd actually do in some situation like that?"

"I'd kill them," she said, like it was the simplest thing in the world.

"Well, okay, but what if you had no –" Though it wasn't like she needed to be armed. "Look, what if they'd just cut off your scythes, or something, and…"

"I could still fight them. I'm strong."

"There'd be too many of them, okay? Or they'd have, I don't know, knocked you unconscious and then tied you up with unbreakable rope beforehand. What would you do then?"

She considered it for a moment. "Nothing," she then said, shrugging. "There wouldn't be anything to do."

"Nothing," he repeated. He took a breath and expelled it in a sigh. "Yeah, I guess I'd be doing nothing too." He stared at the road ahead. "Well, fuck."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"You're lying."

He looked at her in exasperation. "Look, Mia, can we please just talk about something other than being stuck in a bad horror movie?"

She tilted her head. "Why?"

"Well, it's just…" He gestured vaguely at her. "Imagining that… This stuff could never actually happen and it makes me queasy, okay?"

"It could happen. There are plenty of nutjobs out there."

"Mia, just…"

"Many of them want the Pokémorphs dead. And you, too."

"Will you just _shut the fuck up_ about that? Christ."

She looked at him but didn't say anything; after a moment she turned towards the passenger-side window.

He sighed, rubbing his forehead. "I'm sorry."

"That's okay," said Mia, her tone indifferent as ever. Knowing her, she probably didn't even know what he was sorry about. He didn't know why he bothered.

"Maybe we can see another movie sometime," he offered as he stopped the car to let her out.

"That would be nice," she replied before she slammed the door.


	18. Chapter 9,5

**Author's Note:** This is also an extra about Dave and Mia talking about random stuff (see the author's note for 'Dave and Mia Discuss Sex'), but less silly than the previous three and accordingly had rather more effort put into it - which is to say, there is actual narration that's not solely there to provide beat panels in the conversation. Takes place the night after the end of chapter nine (if you're confused about the references to 'last night', check that chapter again).

Unlike the others, you _can_ take this seriously. Constructive criticism is good.

* * *

He didn't know why they got _him_ to watch Mia and Lucy that night. He wasn't even sure why they needed watching at all; Cheryl hadn't really made clear what they were doing. What the fuck could they be doing at a time like this that warranted babysitting, even? (Oh, he could think of things, but he liked to think their sex life wasn't _that_ interesting – though he didn't like to think of their sex life at all, really – and by all appearances she had used to agree. And there were better times for that than when there was a crazed murderer on the loose, for fuck's sake.)

But he'd agreed to it anyway, because it was _Cheryl_, and he had to make up for last night somehow, and the girls were probably more of a target than she and Howard were anyway: she was probably safer without them than with. Maybe Mia and Lucy were safer with him, too; he did have cops hanging around his house. Or maybe being with him just made them all a juicier target. It was hard to tell.

It was both disturbing and fascinating, watching the two of them play; Lucy could do the creepiest shit while wearing the happiest, most innocent-looking smile in the known universe, and Mia got a funny, predatory glint in her eye every time she prepared to pounce on her sister, her slightest movements eerily precise and calculated. He wasn't that often around them playing together. Seeing Mia look something resembling actually happy was a nice change; Lucy usually seemed pretty happy, but with Mia she was positively ecstatic. They were a strange pair, somehow complementing one another despite that the only thing they had in common was being really fucking creepy in their own different ways.

He made steak for dinner, anticipating Mia would love it rare, and was satisfied to find he was right on that count. He drank a few beers with it, maybe a few more than he meant to. At some point Lucy insisted she was supposed to be going to bed, so he told her to go do that. (Maybe he should've had something like that in place for Jean. She always stayed up too late.) Mia remained up, watching the second half of the movie that was on TV with him (some vapid shit about how true love conquers all, vaguely salvaged by the lead actress's cleavage; he couldn't imagine why Mia would prefer it over watching paint dry, but she sat there anyway until the end) while he had a few more drinks.

"So, uh," he said as he muted the sickeningly heartfelt end credits music, "did your parents mention what they were doing tonight?"

She shook her head.

"Nothing about why they wanted me to take you?"

"Mom thought you were lonely and probably needed company."

He looked at her and blinked. "Well, that's bullshit," he said after a moment, taking a sip from the can he was holding. Mia nodded vaguely, still with her eyes on the scrolling text on the screen.

"I mean," he went on after a second, "I guess that's nice of her, but… what the fuck." He sipped a little more, thinking. "She didn't, uh, seem upset or anything, did she?"

Mia shrugged. "Not particularly."

"Did she talk about last night?"

Mia shook her head. He wasn't sure if he felt better or worse about that.

"What about your dad? Did he seem more inclined to kill me than usual?" The idea of Howard wanting to kill somebody drew an involuntary chuckle out of him. "Or, I don't know, give me an annoyed look?"

She shrugged.

"No? Well, that's good. I don't know what I'd _do_ if he gave me an annoyed look."

Mia looked at him with that subtly puzzled expression of hers.

"Yes, that was a joke."

He sipped his drink. Her gaze flicked disinterestedly around the room, probably looking for insects to murder.

"That's the thing about your dad," he said. "He doesn't know how to be truly angry at somebody. I mean, Jesus. It's not natural. Sometimes I want to, I don't know, greet him every day with a punch in the face just to marvel at how not-pissed-off he'd be, except that'd be like kicking a fucking puppy – I bet he'd like, ask me to _please_ stop and then quietly resign from his job and turn to… fucking _gardening_ or something."

Mia didn't look like she was listening, but he knew she was (she was always listening to everything, even if her attention seemed to be elsewhere), and he didn't really give a damn anyway.

"I mean, fuck," he continued, "I can't even tell if he knows, because there wouldn't be any goddamn difference. It creeps the hell out of me."

"Knows what?"

"Hm?"

"You can't tell if he knows what?"

"Never mind." He rubbed his nose. "Fuck."

The good thing about Mia was that you could say 'never mind' and she actually wouldn't mind. Her eyes flicked towards the muted commercial on the television, the kind of bullshit ad where there was no Earthly way to tell what they were advertising (a group of men in crudely made Pokémon costumes sitting around a poker table – what the _fuck_). He lifted the can to his lips again.

"Why do you drink so much beer?" Mia asked suddenly without looking at him.

He started to laugh. "You always just ask the best questions, don't you?"

She turned towards him, apparently expecting an answer; he sighed. "I like it and sometimes it makes me feel less like shit. What's not to like?"

"I want to try it."

He blinked. "Uh." He scratched at his chin for a second, considering it. "Well, who am I to pretend to be a responsible parent. Whatever. Why not."

He pushed the next can he'd gotten out towards her on the table. She reached for it, not in a hurry, looked at it for a moment, opened it and sniffed at it, expression observant and focused. He watched her with amusement as he emptied his own drink.

After a bit more examination, Mia finally raised the can to her mouth and took a small sip. She seemed to spend a second evaluating it before she wrinkled her nose and put the can back down.

Dave chuckled. "It's probably for the best. It's bad for you."

"Then why do you drink it?"

"Because I'm an adult with fully-developed frontal lobes and that means I'm free to fuck up my own life however I fucking please without it being anybody else's problem."

She shrugged.

"By the way, uh, you don't have to tell your mom and dad that I gave you beer."

Mia nodded. After a moment she said, "My parents are scared."

Well, fuck.

"You're not going to drink that, are you?" he asked, reaching for the can Mia had put away. She shook her head and let him take it.

He took a sip. Mia was still looking at him, in that expectant way. "Aren't we all?" he said, reaching for the remote to turn off the TV. "Psycho murderer on the loose, Brian's fucking _dead_, we could be next. Anybody would be a little unnerved."

She tilted her head.

"I mean," he went on, "maybe not _you_, because you're pretty fucking special in more ways than one, but…" He gulped down a bit more of his drink. "See, fear is just a defensive response in the brain. It goes 'there's danger, so try not to get killed'. That's all there is to it."

Mia looked at him for a moment. "You're scared too," she then said.

"What's your point?" he replied, irritation seeping into his voice. "What the fuck do you expect us to do? Not care that somebody fucking _shot Brian_? I mean, Christ, he wasn't even… they weren't even going for him, they were going for me." Another quick sip. "That's the sickest part of all. I mean, fuck. You know, maybe there is a god, except he's a sadistic bastard who saw one of his followers aiming a gun at me and thought, 'Wouldn't it be fucking _hilarious_ if it hit the most self-sacrificing nice-guy on the planet instead?'" He laughed mirthlessly at the idea.

"That's _dumb_," Mia said, her tone annoyed. "Coincidences happen both ways. Somewhat unlikely incidents are not evidence for the existence of a supernatural, physics-defying intelligence."

Dave took a long sip of his drink. "Yeah," he said eventually. "I know that."

There was a long silence. Mia looked straight ahead, at the blank television; he imagined she was mulling over whether to forgive him for that grievous lapse in rationality. It was probably too late to tell her it was a joke.

"If they come here," she said after a while, turning back towards him, "I'll defend you."

He blinked. "Uh. That's…" His imagination saw Mia leaping in front of a bullet, bleeding, dying. "…Thanks."

"I could beat them," she insisted as if she knew exactly what he'd been thinking. "I'm fast."

"No, you couldn't," he said. "They have _guns_. You're fast but last time I checked you couldn't break the fucking sound barrier."

"They have human reaction times," she replied. "Imperfect aim. They can be distracted."

"I don't give a fuck if they can be distracted. You'd die. Maybe you could put up a fight for a few seconds, but they'd fucking _shoot you_."

"It's a calculated risk."

"Calculated fucking nothing."

"If I didn't act, they would kill all of us anyway."

"So defend _yourself_, for Christ's sake." He'd raised his voice a bit more than he intended; he tried to tone it down. "I don't want anybody else getting shot to death in my place, okay?"

He drank more, quickly; Mia looked at him with something like faint curiosity. "I'd be defending all of us," she said. "It amounts to the same thing. You're just arguing with what to call it."

"Well, then don't _call it_ defending me."

"Why?"

"_Because_," he began exasperatedly, "because can we talk about something else? Christ."

He finished his drink and walked to the fridge to get another one.

"You're dodging the question," said Mia when he returned. Her expression was becoming frustrated. "Is it because of the beer?"

"No, it's not the fucking beer," he said as he sat down and took a sip from the bottle he'd retrieved.

"Alcohol interferes with judgement and reasoning."

He started to giggle. (Okay, so maybe he was a little drunk.) Mia frowned at him, annoyed.

"If you're not going to make any sense, I'm going to sleep," she threatened.

Maybe it'd be nice if she went to bed and left him alone, he thought. And at the same time he really, really didn't want her to.

"No, stay," he said, waving his hand vaguely at her as she was preparing to stand up. "You don't… I'm fine. Don't go."

She sat tentatively back down, looking warily at him. "Why not?"

"It's, uh…" he began before taking a sip from his bottle. "I like talking to you, all right? You're smart and you're interesting and let's face it, it's a shitload better than talking to myself because I'm kind of a dick."

She shrugged. "I enjoy talking to you, when you make sense."

He chuckled a little. "Thanks. I'll try."

There was silence. He wondered if she'd return to the same question as before, but she didn't. Knowing her, she'd probably never actually cared about the answer in the first place.

"Do you think it's just one killer?" she asked at long last.

He sighed and took a sip of his drink before answering. "I don't know," he said. "Could be one guy, could be a global fucking government conspiracy for all we know."

She nodded thoughtfully.

"That's the worst part. We don't know jack shit, and here we are hiding away from… you know, whatever the fuck's actually going on, completely in the dark, just… waiting for somebody else to die. I mean, what are the odds they'll catch the guy, just like that, based on the information they have now? It's basically zero. Somebody else is going to get killed, sooner or later, and I just…" He took a quick swig from his bottle. "Fuck."

Everything was silent, even the usual noise of traffic absent; Mia gazed at the empty TV screen, expression focused but faraway. (He _knew_ she was listening; she always listened. She was the only person who ever listened.) He looked at the screen with her and didn't mean to say anything else.

"I don't know what I'd do if they got Cheryl," he then heard himself blurting out all of a sudden, in a strained, shaky voice that sounded absolutely nothing like him, and fuck he was drunk; he should go to bed already and sleep it off and maybe tomorrow he'd actually want to get up again (_maybe_) –

"If they killed you," Mia said, her voice cool but chillingly devoid of her usual indifference, "I'd hunt them down."

He looked at her and knew he shouldn't find that weirdly touching and ought to say something about revenge being an archaic, morally obsolete practice and that she'd go to jail – something reasonable that she'd understand – but instead he just put his beer down on the table and said, quietly, "They'll kill you. Please don't."

He expected protests, whys, insistence that she _could_ take on armed murderers and win, but this time, she just didn't reply. He exhaled slowly, half in relief, half in exhaustion, rubbing his forehead. (He was so fucking tired.)

"Listen, Mia," he said after composing himself for a moment, "we should probably go to sleep."

She nodded absent-mindedly and stood up. He was glad he'd prepared the extra mattress in Jean's room before dinner; he wasn't sure he'd have survived trying to arrange that now.

He didn't know why, but as he collapsed into his bed he felt somewhat better than last night.

* * *

When Cheryl came to pick them up the next morning, he dragged himself out of bed through a pounding headache to answer the door. The girls were ready and out in the corridor within minutes; Cheryl lingered for a moment at the door, looking at him.

"How did it go?" she asked quietly, shifting a little; her arms hugged her coat, like she was cold.

"Fine," he replied and looked at her, trying to get words around something intelligent with whatever parts of his brain were not in the process of being beaten into a pulp. "Was that," he mumbled eventually, "did you get me to do that… for my sake?"

One corner of her mouth twitched into a faint half-smile, an expression nobody else could have made so weirdly attractive. He looked down and shook his head. "I didn't deserve that."

"I did it anyway," she said simply, without affection, not disagreeing.

He looked into her eyes again for a moment – tired, worried, haunted eyes – and said the only thing he could think of: "Thanks."

He wanted to add an apology for the day before yesterday, too, but she looked away, sighing, and said, "Goodbye, Dave."

"Bye," he said, and then the three of them were gone.


	19. Dave and Mia Discuss Relationships

**Author's Note:** Wrote a couple of additional silly Dave and Mia extras I hadn't uploaded. The other will go up in a couple of days.

* * *

There were a lot of things that puzzled Mia about people. She had learned to accept it long ago, of course, and she didn't lose any sleep over it, but it frustrated her because she liked understanding things, and there were a lot of things that involved people behaving in puzzling ways that she didn't entirely understand.

Today, for instance, she had noticed two girls in her class discreetly holding hands under the table and sitting a little closer to one another than they normally did and kissing behind the school building during recess, and that made her ask Dave, "What are relationships for?"

"It's a sexual exclusivity thing," he answered after a moment. "In our ancestors, because human kids are helpless as all fuck for several years after being born, it was advantageous for fathers to help raise their children to make sure they survived to adulthood, only they don't know it's their kid unless the mother was _only_ sleeping with them. Because it's the mother's kid too and she wants it to reach adulthood just as much, she also wants the father to stick around instead of just running off to fuck somebody else. Pairing off into couples who mostly have sex with one another turns out to be a win-win, genes for latching onto one person of the opposite sex and being jealous start to dominate the gene pool, and here we are."

"But there are two girls in my class who are in a relationship together."

Dave raised his eyebrows, his lips curling into an amused smile for some reason. "Well, the beauty of evolution is that once you get past how brilliant it is, you realize it's really pretty terrible at its job. That applies doubly to evolved behavior of any kind. The falling-in-love mechanism doesn't know it's supposed to be ensuring you have kids; it just makes you fall in love, and as a society we've advanced to the point where we don't really give a damn what it was actually supposed to do anymore."

Mia considered this. "So humans are still sexually exclusive even when they're both girls or not having kids or can just have paternity tests and it doesn't make sense."

He tilted his head a little. "Well, it still makes sense, in a different way. People want to be happy, and evolution works on behavior by programming us to feel good and be happy when we do something it thinks is correlated with having more offspring, like being in monogamous relationships. What they feel doesn't change just because we know _why_."

Mia nodded, satisfied. People wanting to be happy made sense. A lot of bizarre things really boiled down to people trying to be happy.

Then she furrowed her brow, because on second thought this didn't quite make sense either. "My mom slept with you even though she was with my dad, though."

"Jesus Christ," Dave said, suddenly defensive. "When are you going to shut the fuck up about that?"

Mia frowned, looking out the window. Dave usually made sense to her, but whenever she brought this up he seemed to clam up in the stupidest way and act as if it wasn't true when it obviously was. "Are you jealous because she's also having sex with my dad?" she guessed after a pause.

"No!" he replied exasperatedly. The curious strain in his voice told her that was somewhat closer to the truth than he let on.

"I don't think my dad's jealous. He doesn't act weird around her the way you do."

"He has no reason to be jealous because he doesn't – as far as I know – just, for fuck's sake, stop thinking about this."

It irritated her when he got upset over stupid things, because she liked him and he was usually better at making sense than most people. Of all the times when people were puzzling it bothered her most when it was him. He was supposed to know better.

"Why would she sleep with you when she already had my dad and people are jealous and happier in monogamous relationships?"

Dave made a strange face somewhere midway between pained and amused that then turned into a stiff wince. "You tell me."

Mia watched him with interest, starting to catch on. Dave was just confused because her mom didn't make sense. _That_ explained a lot. "Is it like a love triangle?" she asked after a pause, and suddenly Dave burst out laughing, in a bitter, hollow way.

"No. The only guy she loves is your dad, love triangles are a horrible plot device in bad movies, and I'd be very grateful if I never, ever had to hear that phrase out of the mouth of a half-Scyther again."

She frowned again. "But then why bother having sex with someone else?"

Dave chuckled spitefully. "Maybe your dad has a small dick."

She looked blankly at him and couldn't imagine why that would be relevant.

"That was a joke," he said, waving a hand at her. "Maybe. I don't even know. Fuck."

"Love seems very impractical," she said after a moment. "There's no point in it if it's one-sided. There should be a mechanism to make you fall in love with the next best choice if the first one is unavailable, instead of being hung up on the same one."

"Well, people generally do just that after some time," Dave said, a little reluctantly.

"Why haven't you, then?"

There was silence. She cocked her head, waiting for an answer, watching his reactions: his fingers clutching the steering wheel just a little tighter, the muscles and tendons in his neck tensing a little. Her eyes locked onto the throbbing pulse near his throat, and she felt her senses automatically tuning themselves and reaching out and noticing the smell of the blood rushing through his body and the fact he was not looking in her direction right now and was really very vulnerable.

He sighed, glancing at her. "Uh, hotdogs?"

She nodded. That would be nice. She was kind of hungry.

She noticed his brow furrowing ever so slightly, warily, before he looked away from her again. "Mia, uh," he said after a moment, hesitantly, "what are you thinking right now?"

"I'm hungry," she replied, shrugging.

"Right," he said, still wary. He gave her a couple more concerned glances out of the corner of his eye before he opened his mouth again. "Just so we're clear here, when you say 'hungry' you mean 'let's get hotdogs', not 'I want to tear Dave's throat out and eat him', right?"

"Both," she said.

She watched him raise his eyebrows slowly and take a very deep breath. "Okay," he said, in the slightly slower, carefully leveled voice that he used when he was pretending not to be nervous, "you remember when we talked about self-control?"

"I won't eat you," she said, mildly irritated; she had told him this many times before. "I like talking to you more than I'd like eating you."

"That's great," he said, still in the same voice, "but you can't eat people you don't like, either."

"I know," she said.

"Tell me why."

"Because it would be found out, I'd go to jail and it wouldn't pay in the long term."

He nodded, slowly, without looking at her. "Never forget, all right?"

It was a stupid question. She didn't _forget_.

Dave parked the car outside the hotdog stand, but didn't open the door immediately, which usually meant he wanted to say something. She waited and watched him swallow before he turned to her, but even then he didn't actually speak; he just sat there for a while, looking at her in silence, his eyes very open and concerned. She stared back at the wild blue patterns of his irises and her reflection in his pupils and the shadows of the people on the street moving indistinctly behind her.

"Mia…" he said finally, leaning slowly back and relaxing a little in the driver's seat as he squeezed his eyes shut. He took a breath, again like he was going to say something, but then changed his mind. Mia, getting impatient, reached for the handle on the passenger-side door.

"Please don't let me down," he said, turning towards her again, and she wondered why he would keep repeating that when she had gotten it the first time.

After a moment he turned away, and they exited the car. He stopped by the front to wait for her and offer her his hand, like he always did. In his eyes and his posture and the barely noticeable tremble to his fingers, she could see the subconscious fear that wanted him to stay a safe distance from her and the pure suicidal willpower that refused to back away, and she smiled.

He didn't always make sense, and he didn't always answer her questions, and he didn't always buy her hotdogs. But he was always willing to make these small gestures to show that he _believed_ she wouldn't hurt him, and though she didn't know entirely why she found that so satisfying, she did.

She took his hand and together they walked towards the hotdog stand.


	20. Dave and Mia Discuss Hotdogs

**Author's Note:** Present tense alert. If that makes your eyes bleed, you have been warned. Also, this takes place four years after the creation of the morphs, or six years before most of the fic.

* * *

Scyther are fucked-up Pokémon.

Not only are they surprisingly smart and ruthless predators, but they also have a unique social structure where they group together in swarms only to subsequently make every effort to leave one another alone. They hunt alone, sleep alone and generally mind their own business. They are social, in the sense that other Scyther are an important part of their day-to-day environment and they must have a keen ability to predict and model other individuals. But because their primary direct interactions with one another are battling and mating, they never needed to evolve any sense of compassion or empathy, the way humans understand empathy. It would only have gotten in the way. They _understand_ each other's point of view, but they don't care.

There is a lot of scientific literature on the evolution – Darwinian evolution, not flashy metamorphosis-evolution – of different Pokémon species, and Dave has read a lot of it. And because he likes to know what the fuck he's doing when he works on something new and interesting, he's probably read close to _all_ of it when it comes to the species they picked out for the Pokémorph project.

So to make a long story short, what he's read about Scyther has given Dave some suspicions about Mia Kerrigan. She was late to start talking, shows little interest in people, only intermittently makes eye contact, and speaks with slightly off inflections. Cheryl is worried she's autistic. Dave is worried she _isn't_.

He's no psychologist, but it obviously wouldn't help to take her to some professional child psychologist who doesn't know jack shit about Scyther and would have nothing but some autistic spectrum disorder diagnosis to label her with anyway. (Plus he doesn't trust strangers with anything relating to the Pokémorphs, really. The only way to make sure things get done right is to do them yourself.) So he's going to attempt to use what he does know to find out what's going on in her brain.

It sounds simple and straightforward. From experience over the past four years, he knows never to trust things that sound simple and straightforward to actually be that way.

So when Dave sits down opposite Mia at the Kerrigans' kitchen table, he fully expects her to be difficult. For the moment, though, she's just looking him up and down and still hasn't said anything, which he knows her well enough to not find surprising. He places his suitcase on the table before he looks at her and says, "Hi, Mia."

"Hi," she responds, her expression the same neutral as ever.

"Your mom might have told you, but if she didn't, we're going to do some experiments. All you have to do is answer my questions."

Her eyes flicker vaguely between him and the suitcase. "Why?" she says, just as he's concluding she isn't going to answer.

Dave sighs. "For science," he says. "It's not like you have anything better to do."

Mia considers it for a moment and then nods. "Okay."

Well. That part _was_ surprisingly easy.

He decides to start with basic empathy. He pulls two pencil cases out of the suitcase and puts them on the table in front of Mia. "They're empty," he says as he shows her. "But now I'm going to take this pencil and put it in this one."

He does so and closes the pencil cases. Mia looks very unimpressed.

"Pretend your mom is in here with us and saw that, all right? And now, suppose I ask her to go somewhere else and she leaves the room. Got all that?"

She nods warily.

"Okay," he says. "Now, Mia, where is the pencil?"

She looks at him like he's retarded. "You know where the pencil is," she says. "You put it there yourself."

"Yeah, I did," he answers patiently, "but I want to know if you know."

"You showed me where you put it."

"Maybe you forgot."

"This is stupid."

Mia is beginning to turn away, so Dave gives up. "Okay, the pencil is in this one, right?" he says, indicating the pencil case on his left, the one that really has the pencil in it. She doesn't dignify that with an answer, but he never thought she'd have any problem remembering where the pencil is anyway, so he lets it slide and moves on to the next part.

He opens the pencil case, takes the pencil out, and moves it to the other pencil case.

"Where's the pencil now?" he asks.

She gives him that this-is-retarded look again, and on reflection he's starting to agree with her. "Okay, never mind," he says. "That's not the point anyway. The point is, if your mom came back in now and I asked her which case the pencil is in, what would _she_ say?"

Mia looks at him for a moment and then points at the one on the right.

These kinds of things have always amused Dave. The idea that certain seemingly obvious concepts just aren't _there_ in the minds of kids for some time is one of those delightfully counterintuitive little nuggets that every so often make you consciously aware of the brain being a machine. He leans a little back in his chair and can't help grinning. "But how would she know that when she wasn't in here when I switched them?"

"Because you wouldn't make her leave the room like that and then ask her about it unless it was a trick," she says immediately.

This is the precise moment where it hits him, for the first time, that she is fucking brilliant.

He lets out a chuckle of disbelief. "Good point," he concedes. "Okay, you're smarter than whoever thought up this test."

He puts away the pencil cases, watching Mia. She is looking disinterestedly around, unaware of having done anything impressive or unusual. If it were Jean thinking she'd figured something out, she'd he wearing a triumphant grin and looking expectantly at him, waiting for recognition of her achievement. Mia clearly doesn't give a fuck about impressing him, and that's exactly what makes it so impressive. She wasn't expecting a trick question and looking for the answer _he_ wanted; she just told the truth as she saw it.

A really stupid idea strikes him, and he flips through his brain for the dumbest riddle he's ever heard. "Where do Magikarp keep their money?"

She gives him that look again. "Magikarp don't have any money."

"But where would they keep it if they did?"

He waits. She clearly thinks the question is ridiculous and shows no inclination to answer it.

"Give up?" He pauses again for dramatic effect. "They keep it… in the river bank."

She looks at him for a long second without changing her expression. "They don't have any money," she repeats. "They can't keep it anywhere because they don't have any. And they can't even dig in the river bank, so they couldn't put it there."

"It's a river _bank_. Banks keep your money. See?"

"It's not a bank. It's a _river_ bank."

Dave grins helplessly at her sheer lack of amusement. She doesn't even think the joke is unfunny; she doesn't see the joke at all. Some part of him hopes she never will. The world would be a smarter place if everyone made enough of a distinction between words and concepts for bad puns to be this completely lost on them.

"But that's enough of that," he says and reaches into his suitcase again. "I have another test for you."

Mia looks marginally less annoyed at that. She watches his hands as he pulls out a stack of photographs of eyes, then looks back up at his face. She isn't quite making eye contact, more just looking _at_ him.

"Okay. Just look at the pictures one at a time and tell me how you think the people in them are feeling."

She nods. He shows her the first picture, and she peers at it. "He's pretending to be angry," she concludes after a moment.

Dave blinks and turns the photo around to look at it. "Why do you think he's just pretending?"

"The eyebrows are too scrunched. People only look like that when they're pretending."

In retrospect he supposes it's a little exaggerated, but it doesn't exactly make him think 'pretending'. He switches photos, warily.

"Sad," she says.

It only takes a few more photos to completely convince him that she is not autistic because she can read these emotions better than he can. Then, as he continues because he brought thirty photos and he might as well get through them all, another pattern starts emerging. Slowly he starts to get the feeling that she's processing the pictures in a wholly different way than he is. She notices things like two sets of eyes belonging to the same guy (who, she says, is probably really sad, because he's better at acting sad than happy). She impassively notes that unusually many of the eyes in the pictures are blue. At that point he doesn't think he's noticed any of the eye colors, and for all he knows they could all have been purple. She notices particular wrinkles around the eyes and comments on them (or the lack thereof), the differences between the environments reflected in the subjects' irises (he doesn't even know how to respond to that), the wideness of the pupils, and even more ridiculous details that seem to indicate she is actually looking at the pictures and carefully analyzing them, not just instinctively picking up the emotion being conveyed.

Is this what she does every time she looks at someone's face? Does it even count, for the purposes of a test like this? He doesn't know, because he isn't a fucking psychologist.

As he puts the stack of photos away, he looks at her and scratches the back of his neck, thinking. He knows there are autistic savants with extraordinary observational skills. He also knows Scyther can pinpoint their prey's weak points in a split second, before it can react. Maybe this is how they look at everything. So far nothing has been very conclusive. She does seem to have a theory of mind going, with recognition of the idea of others having different knowledge than she does, but that alone hardly disproves some kind of autism.

The most obvious way to test the theory that her oddities stem from her Scyther genes is now to try to establish whether or not she experiences sympathy or concern for others' suffering, provided she's aware of it. Autistics don't have any problems with that, generally. It's the becoming aware of the suffering that they can have difficulty with, and Mia doesn't seem to have any problems with that, even if her way of finding out is a little unconventional. It's psychopaths that lack compassion. Unfortunately for Mia's chances of having something approaching a normal mind, research seems to suggest that Scyther are psychopaths by nature, but the point is that though she could coincidentally happen to be an autistic psychopath, that's unlikely enough to make any signs of psychopathy at this point pretty damning evidence that her Scyther genes had a hell of a lot more to do with behavior than they assumed when they were putting her together. The problem is just figuring out how to test that.

Part of him feels like he could actually just ask her, because he decidedly can't picture her lying about it. But he knows that psychopaths are supposedly often good at manipulating people while appearing trustworthy, and no matter how much it breaks his brain to try to imagine this four-year-old girl is a master manipulator, he also knows he can't make any assumptions when it comes to the Pokémorphs.

He thinks it over, trying to come up with something that eliminates as many other variables as possible, and then what he actually ends up saying for some reason is, "My dad died last week."

Her expression doesn't change. She looks at him and waits, like she's expecting him to get to the point. He already knows in his gut that she doesn't care, doesn't even realize she should care. And for some reason he's kind of relieved.

"Cancer," he finds himself saying. "I hadn't talked to him in years. Never even knew he had it. Funny how that works out."

Why the fuck he's dumping this on an empathyless little girl of all people is a mystery to him, but she sits there and considers it, with no apparent perception that this is at all inappropriate. "Then it doesn't matter," she says. "If you didn't talk to him anyway, it doesn't change anything."

She says it like it's about as obvious as the river bank not storing money. He could be imagining it, but it seems like there's an accusatory vibe to it, like she wants to tell him he's being a pussy thinking this is any kind of a big deal. (Did he sound upset? He didn't think he did.)

"Well," he starts to explain himself, because for some dumb reason he feels like he _needs_ to explain himself to the empathyless little girl, "even if you don't talk to somebody there's always this part of you that thinks someday you're going to, until one day you realize that now it's just too fucking late."

He remembers he's talking to a four-year-old the moment the word is out of him, but Mia at least seems unperturbed. "That would have happened anyway," she counters. "He would just have died sometime later."

"Yeah," he says, because from an objective perspective she's absolutely right. He can't say that knowledge makes him feel better, exactly, but it's sobering to realize even a fucking four-year-old can see that. "You're right. Never mind."

She looks around for a moment, apparently content to change the subject. Then she asks, "What does 'fucking' mean?"

Goddamn it. "Uh. Not really anything, in that sentence."

She tilts her head. "Why would you use a word that doesn't mean anything?"

"Grownups do that sometimes."

"That's stupid."

"Yeah, isn't it? I'm sure you'd never do that."

"Why do you?"

He looks helplessly at her. "It's a swear word. Do you know what swear words are?"

"Swear words mean something."

"Only when you're really talking about what they mean. I wasn't talking about what that word means. People say 'what the hell' and they're not really talking about fictional underground torture chambers; they just mean 'what'. What I said just meant 'it's too late', but I used a swear word because that's just what people do sometimes for emphasis. You're not supposed to know that word, so don't tell your parents I said it. Okay?"

Mia nods slowly. "So what _does_ it mean?"

Dave will never, ever, fucking _ever_ forget to watch his language around kids again.

"You don't need to know that," he says in exasperation. "Nobody's going to talk to you about that for the next ten years."

Mia considers that and then shrugs, apparently taking his word for it.

That was also surprisingly easy. The easy parts with her, oddly, are exactly the parts that would be hardest with Jean.

He lets out a breath and leans back in his chair. "Speaking of hell," he says. "Your parents haven't been teaching you that stuff, have they?"

"What stuff?"

"Religion. Big almighty guy in the sky who created the world and forgives your sins, et cetera."

She shakes her head.

"Oh, thank God." He has never understood how otherwise intelligent people can hold on to their childhood religion well into adulthood, but he supposes he can give them some credit for having the decency to not force it on their own kids. "Well, in case they try, it's all something gullible people thought up thousands of years ago to explain natural phenomena before they had science. There is no evidence for any of it. But don't take my word for it; ask them. Then ask them why they believe it anyway because I'd sure like to know."

Mia frowns for a moment. "Are my parents stupid?" she then says.

"Eh," he says, scratching the back of his neck. "Well, your mom's great. I don't think she really believes any of it, deep down. She's just into the community stuff. And your dad… well, he knows his science just fine. I guess he's just going for first prize in the Compartmentalization Olympics."

He expects her to ask what that means, but for whatever reason, she doesn't.

There is silence. Mia is glancing disinterestedly around; he gets the feeling she doesn't quite grasp the idea of conversation so much as individual strings of questions and answers.

"Mia," he says after a moment, leaning a bit forward over the table, "do you ever want to hurt people?"

She seems to spend a second evaluating whether to answer the question before she says, "Sometimes."

Dave nods slowly. It's already becoming increasingly apparent that _all_ the morphs, except maybe Gabriel, have some violent tendencies, so that's not unexpected. The others don't really act on them, because they don't have any problem with the idea that hurting people is wrong. He's just not sure how well that's going to work if Mia really lacks empathy.

"One day," he says, "you're going to grow scythes on your arms. They're going to be sharp and dangerous. When that happens, it's going to be very, very important that you don't hurt anyone. Do you understand why?"

Mia looks at him, probably analyzing the size of his pupils or trying to gauge his motivations in asking that question, and finally shakes her head.

Dave exhales. This seems to be the best confirmation to date that he's really created a monster. And yet he doesn't feel like a mad scientist with an unstable creation that must be kept at bay. She's just a little girl equipped with a slightly different brain than the rest of us – a really brilliant brain, too, even if she's also missing a circuit or two. Who knows how much potential there could be in that brain?

She's not dangerous, not necessarily. There are psychopaths who lead normal, nonviolent lives. All she really needs is persuasion that she ought to, in terms that make sense to her.

"Do you like hotdogs?" he asks after a moment of thought.

Unfazed by the sudden change in topic, Mia nods.

"So if there was a hotdog on the table that you could have, you'd eat it?"

She nods again, warily.

"What if I told you I'd poisoned the hotdog, and eating it would make you very sick for a whole week?"

She gives him a suspicious glare. "Why would you poison it?"

He pauses, realizing this probably wasn't the right way to begin this approach. "Let's try this again," he says. "Say there was a hotdog and you were going to eat it, and then I came in and told you actually that hotdog was part of an experiment I was doing and I'd injected it with some nasty bacteria that were going to make you sick. Would you still eat it?"

"No," she says, in that obvious, I-question-your-motives-in-even-asking-me-this-question way.

He nods and leans towards her over the table again. "It's important that you don't hurt people," he says, "because if you do, there are going to be people who think you're dangerous and need to be locked away, and they're going to have things their way no matter what we try. You'll have to eat what they tell you to eat and do what they tell you to do. You won't be allowed to go anywhere you want or see people you want to see. And they might never let you out. Do you understand now?"

She blinks at him. She seems a bit caught off guard; he doesn't imagine anyone has really tried using this kind of pure rhetoric of self-interest on her before. Reward and punishment as people normally think about them are dependent on a system of morality: they rely on the idea that people _deserve_ something-or-other for doing certain things. When people really think punishment is unjust, they want to change the rules; they aren't content with just not breaking them. Dave doubts Mia would really buy the idea of punishment at all, when she couldn't properly comprehend why she was being punished. But this is a matter of simple consequences: if you do this, that will happen, grouping the two together so that they must be evaluated as a combination. Mia understood the poisoned hotdog. She has to understand this, too.

After a long second of evaluation, she nods. He leans back and releases a breath he didn't know he was holding, feeling oddly like he's just passed some kind of a test.

Maybe a conventional moral upbringing would completely go over her head, but if she can just be reasoned with on a basis she accepts towards the right conclusion, her rational mind should provide a substitute for everything she's missing. All she needs is the right line of reasoning, the right argument, the right logic to turn the gears in her head the right way, and then…

(Challenge accepted.)

And then everything should be fine.

"So you said you like hotdogs," he says. "How about we go out and get some hotdogs right now and talk more on the way?"

"That would be nice," she says with evident satisfaction.

_Well, this will be interesting,_ he thinks and reaches for his car keys.


	21. Dave and Mia Watch Paint Dry

**Author's Note:** This is a stupid little drabble (i.e. exactly 100 words) that came about when I made some joke about how I'd write about Dave and Mia watching paint dry. Yeah. I just couldn't resist.

* * *

Mia cocks her head at the wall. "Can you actually see it dry?"

"No, you can't," Dave says impatiently. "You can't actually _watch_ paint dry. It's an expression, that's all."

She continues to squint at the paint, unconvinced. "It's reflecting more light now than it was earlier."

He looks at the wall (it looks exactly the same as before), then at her. "No, really, Mia. We're not going to watch the paint dry. I was joking."

She doesn't look up, already disturbingly into the whole paint-watching thing.

(Dave wonders dejectedly why he hasn't yet learned not to joke around her.)


End file.
